Geoarchaeological analysis of pedosedimentary archives from site-environment interfaces: reconstructing palaeoenvironmental impacts of protohistoric settlements and towns at Corent (France)
Résumé
This chapter presents the integrated geoarchaeological and palaeoenvironmental studies carried out since 2014 in the Lac du Puy, a small wetland within the protohistoric site of Corent in central France. A combination of soil micromorphology, sedimentology, geochemistry, and palynological data was used to analyze its complex pedosedimentary archives. Results allowed us to reconstruct human-environment interactions from the Early Neolithic to the Roman period, and the environmental impacts related to the emergence of protohistoric urbanism in the 1st millennium BCE. Our findings indicate that the local evolution of pedosedimentary and environmental conditions was clearly driven by settlement and land-use changes. After an intense soil erosion during the Early and Middle Neolithic related to a fortified settlement, agropastoral land-use contributed to soil profile sealing and gleyfication from the beginning of the Bronze Age. Later on, specific environmental impact patterns appear linked with settlement intensification phases during the Middle and Late Bronze Age. The development of successive urban settlements during the Iron Age (including a Gallic oppidum) caused substantial impacts on soils and the hydro-sedimentary system of the plateau. As a consequence, the Lac du Puy became a depression recurrently flooded and was finally backfilled at the end of the period.