Abstract.-Historical factors are rarely taken into account despite their high potential for the understanding of vegetation determinism. This study aims to propose a method to stress the importance of historical factors on the current vegetation. It consists in a comparative socio-ecological analysis of archaeological sites versus control sites, both being in the same ecological conditions for climate, substrate and biotic pressure at present. This approach has been applied to a set of ten feudal mottes located in some forests of the Picardie district (France). Our results show that 1) the feudal mottes support a neutrophilous, eutrophic and semi-heliotropic vegetation though the surrounding forest vegetation is markly acidic, mesotrophic and sciaphilous, 2) specific richness trends to be higher on the mottes, 3) a few species for which the status of a feudal plants ,, is questioned were also obsewed.
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