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International audienc

a b s t r a c tThis article uses a method that combines pedoanthracological and pedo-archaeological approaches to terraces, complemented with archaeological pastoral data, in order to reconstruct the history of ancient agricultural terraces on a slope of the Enveitg Mountain in the French Pyrenees. Four excavations revealed two stages of terrace construction that have been linked with vegetation dynamics, which had been established by analyses of charcoal from the paleosols and soils of the terraces. Pedo-archaeological descriptions of these terrace soils reveal their ancient origins and their long-term use. Their chronology was established by radiocarbon dating of single charcoal fragments and charcoal lenses originating in the paleosols. Combining radiocarbon dating with pedo-archaeology resulted in a more reliable chronology.Moreover, the Bronze Age was found to be a crucial period in the history of land-use. This study also highlights the role of fire in the construction of this land-use pattern.

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The shape and size of grape pips have long been used as criteria in archaeobotany to discriminate wild from cultivated vines. This research is now being conducted so as to extend the set of references to the whole of Europe and the Mediterranean basin on the one hand and to improve morphometrical analysis methods to obtain a characterization going well beyond the simple wild/ cultivated dichotomy on the other hand. Among the cultivated section, the classical morphological approach might allow to distinguish at least two groups of cultivated vine species which have been more or less selected. The first group, which is also the most primitive, appears in Southern France at least as early as the First Iron Age. The soaring of the second group, which is the most productive, is not perceptible before the Modern times at the moment. The integration of carbonized archaeological grape pips in this scheme is backed on an experimental program the aim of which is modelling and correcting the deformation of pips during carbonization. The first results of a new geometrical analysis make us expect a more precise characterization of the genetic and geographic origins of archaeological pips.

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