SEMINAR – Megalithic Landscape, from France to Ethiopia

SEMINAR/SÉMINAIRE

Megalithic Landscape: new investigations methods and conservation issues, from Southern France to Southern Ethiopia

Tuesday 31st October, 3.30PM

@ Addis Abeba University (6kilo campus)

Archaeology & Heritage Managment Department, Main Laboratory

By Vincent Ard (CNRS-TRACES, France) & Aurélien Pierre (Fenaille Museum, France).

Figure 1: Dolmen in Soutwestern France

In Europe, the Neolithic period constitutes a major economic and social upheaval in the history of prehistoric human societies, and was accompanied by a new relationship between man and his environment. The landscape was modified and shaped by the Neolithic farmers, who invented new architectural expressions such as megaliths. The ambition of the MONUMEN project is to confront these monumental architectures, for the first time in France, to better understand the emerging conditions and the development of this phenomenon between the middle of the 5^th  and the end of the 3^rd millennium BC.

This project, presented during this seminar, will pursue a three-dimensional analysis of these sites, and re-integrate them within a landscape perspective by relying on thorough knowledge of geomorphological and environmental contexts. In order to do so, multiple tools (3D, GIS, geophysics, LIDAR, satellite and aerial multispectral imagery, core sampling…) will be used to contribute to a renewal of both our knowledge of the subject and of investigation methods, what is innovative for this period in France.

Figure 2 : Dolmen of Pech Laglaire, Gréalou, Quercy, France

This presentation will provide an opportunity to present the main results and discuss the issue of the conservation of these megalithic sites.

Finally, will be introduced how these new investigation methods and conservation tools are on being implemented on the Megalithic Landscape of the Eastern foothills of the Abaya Lake, in Southern Ethiopia, Gedeo zone.

Figure 3: Stelae site of Sakaro Sodo, Gedeo zone, Ethiopia.