ORDRES ET DESORDRES DE L'ECONOMIE DES SOCIETES DURANT L'AGE DU BRONZE EN FRANCE

Carozza, Laurent; Marcigny, Cyril; Talon, Marc

Type de document :

Pré-publication ou Document de travail

Titre :

ORDRES ET DESORDRES DE L'ECONOMIE DES SOCIETES DURANT L'AGE DU BRONZE EN FRANCE

Auteur(s) :

Carozza, Laurent [Auteur]
Géographie de l'environnement [GEODE]
Marcigny, Cyril [Auteur]
Civilisations atlantiques & Archéosciences [C2A]
Talon, Marc [Auteur]
Histoire, Archéologie et Littérature des Mondes Anciens - UMR 8164 [HALMA]

Mot(s)-clé(s) :

économie
âge du bronze
production

Discipline(s) HAL :

Sciences de l'Homme et Société/Archéologie et Préhistoire

Résumé en anglais : [en]

Which among the many different variables can we interrogate to understand the economy of Bronze Age societies? The tools that archaeology has at its disposal, enables us to reach different levels of analysis. The majority ...
Lire la suite >Which among the many different variables can we interrogate to understand the economy of Bronze Age societies? The tools that archaeology has at its disposal, enables us to reach different levels of analysis. The majority of our documentation, especially when it results from preventive digs, describes the daily activities. Habitats, conservation structures, domestic dumpsters... describe the basis of the subsistence economy. Firstly, agro-pastoral's history stretches over a long period of time, and is only slightly exposed to rapid change, which seems to affect other technical systems, such as metallurgy. Does this apparent opposition to progress depict the outlines of a Neolithic economy of which structures had great difficulty in renewing themselves? The observations conducted on the scale of an archaeological site or enlarged to small territories describe a more complex situation. According to the regions and to the different periods of the Bronze Age, the agricultural structures show a great variability and are witness of a micro-economy of which infra-structures seemingly adapt to the change of scale. The agricultural orientation of certain settlements, formed around buried or aerial storage structures contrasts with more temporary structures, related to a different type of territorial anchorage. Whereas the wide plains and the plateaus know variations in their occupation and in the exploitation of the agricultural fields, other areas, such as mountain ranges, engender opposed symmetric dynamics. The pastoral exploitation in areas of average mountain height, such as the Pyrenean range during the Middle Bronze Age, is obviously related to a specialized economy of production. The complete change affecting the sphere of the agro-pastoral economy was followed by heavy mutations in the Bronze Age society. This process leads, at the dawn of the first millennium B.C., to the elaboration of territories in which certain settlements play a polarizing role. Related to the economic climate of that time, certain fortified or naturally protected sites at the very end of the Bronze Age, lose their traditional agro-pastoral role; they are the witness «to small merchant productions» to quote the terminology of Karl Marx. Occupying a key position in the transfer of raw materials and certain manufactured goods, the dumpsters of these settlements indicate a consumption going far beyond the norm of agricultural and pastoral human units. The excavations carried out on hill-fort type settlements undoubtedly show that these sites play at the same time an essential social and economic role. Does this mean that this process constitutes a peak of a mechanism engaged at the beginning of the second millennium B.C.? The production of raw materials – particularly metallic resources such as copper, tin and lead – undergoes on France's current territory a change in the techniques as well as in the distribution networks which can only be apprehended on a different scale than the one affected by these mutations. In the south of France, the production of the first copper objects which takes place at the very end of the 4th millennium BC develops according to a multipolar model which increases the diversity of the types of resources known on the southern slope of the Massif Central. This system of production, which is in keeping with a model of poor spatial diffusion, is interrupted during the entire Bronze Age whereas the alpine sphere, the British islands, and the Iberian Peninsula will be an area of intensive production. In an indebted position, certain regional groups will cease the exploitation of their copper resources to privilege the acquisition of raw materials through trade. Transported in the shape of ingots, bars or rough outlines, metal partakes of an economy of goods requiring the maintenance of trade networks on a regional and even wider scale. Nevertheless, metal consumption doesn't invest a homogenous aspect in time and space. Thus, certain cultural areas, such as the Atlantic coast, consume openly metallic goods. Southern France on the other hand remains out of these processes. To an even higher degree, the long-term trade networks enable us to access wider territorial organisations, notably revealed by the distribution of rare products, known as « prestige » goods, invested with a strong technological value. The distribution of these goods, only consumed by a handful of people making up the Bronze Age society, depicts an economy inscribed in macro-historical networks, belonging to the “économie-monde” type (F. Braudel). Some important tendencies can be deduced from the above statements; firstly the question of temporality. One wonders what was the rhythm and at which moment these changes took place in the different spheres mentioned? Whereas the economy of prestige goods is frequently put forward to describe the economic pulse and the development of a system constantly expanding geographically and quantitatively. This economy is considered more or less objectively as an evolutionary principle, resulting from economic growth. According to this reasoning, the stages of change follow the technological innovations and also the history of their appearance in contiguous cultural areas. The mechanism of these exchanges and the diffusion of the innovations would therefore constitute the driving force. This would lead with time, ineluctably to the appearance of a regulation of the economy, where the political sphere would play an overwhelming role. According to these models, the part played by the long period of time to the construction of the economical structure as well as the changes intervening in the sphere of the subsistence economy can be considered as indirect factors. Many arguments can oppose this model and reverse the temporalities by considering the changes, even the most discreet, as describing the structure of the economy. The definition and the quantification of the agro-pastoral activities provide an essential documentation which recounts even more an oscillatory movement, demonstrated by the establishment of intensive production structures. The economy linked to the production of raw materials, notably metal, is indicative of the different levels of implication according to a producing or non-producing position. This « market » guardianship, requiring the upkeep of social relations, should be as a choice and not as a determinating constraint. Structuring takes place between the sphere of subsistence and the sphere of the raw material economy. Following this scheme, the cultural entities can be considered as coherent spaces in which goods and ideas circulate (...) attributed to the exchange market. The outlines and the temporalities of these entities give us a glimpse of their rhythms and their modifications, describing crisis and accelerations... Clearly asserted during the end of the Bronze Age, this model confers to the spreading of the innovations a central role; the fact that only the « elite » gain from this is not a sufficient explanation for the process being established. In fine, the main difficulty is to make these different layers coincide in order to propose a consistent discourse. Some strong ideas can be identified: - cultural entities – groups and technical complexes - constitute coherent units which structure the economic organization; - the non rhythmical, non synchronic and multipolar aspect of the dynamics of change results from the maintenance of the complex balances which manifest at the scale of cultural entities; - subsistence economy describes a non-linear system and shows episodes of growth and withdrawal. These systems are fragile and exposed to crisis, which result, for a large part, from the inadequacy between the social and the economic structuresLire moins >

Langue :

Français

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