Wooden resources exploitation

Journées d’études, Paris-Créteil, 7-8 avril 2022

Organisation :
Stéphane LAMOUILLE (IRAA UAR 3155, CNRS-UPPA)
Clémence PAGNOUX (Efa, Athènes & AASPE UMR 7209, MNHN)
Pierre PÉFAU (membre associé TRACES UMR 5608, CNRS-UT2J)
Vanessa PY-SARAGAGLIA (GEODE UMR 5602, CNRS-UT2J)
Sylvie ROUGIER-BLANC (CRHEC EA 4392, UPEC)

Comité scientifique :
Eleni ASOUTI (Université de Liverpool, Royaume-Uni)
Marie-Claude BAL (Université de Limoges, GEODE UMR 5602)
Sylvain BURRI (TRACES-terrae UMR 5608, CNRS-UT2J)
Alexa DUFRAISSE, (AASPE UMR 7209, CNRS-MHNH)
Vincent BERNARD (CReAAH UMR 6566, Université de Rennes I)
Katerina KOULI (Université Nationale et Kapodistrienne d’Athènes, Grèce)
Vincent LABBAS (IRPA-KIK/Université de Liège, Belgique, membre associé de TRACES UMR 5608)
Florence MAZIER (GEODE UMR 5602, CNRS-UT2J)
Magali TORITI (membre associée CReAAH UMR 6566)

Pre-industrial societies were all dominated by agricultural production. What distinguishes them is the importance of the non-agrarian sector of the economy against that agricultural background. While not escaping the limits of an organic economy, the Romans stand out for having developed a wide range of manufacturing businesses and services (e.g. construction, fuel supply, metal-and pottery production). This development stimulated the widespread and large-scale extraction of raw materials like stones, ores, clay and wood. Compared to other premodern economies, raw material consumption rates in the Roman world were thus high. The way in which both renewable (wood) and non-renewable (stone, minerals, metal, clay) resources were exploited is an important determinant for the functioning and longevity of a pre-industrial economic system. Even in a territory as large as the Roman Empire, such activities put considerable pressure on the land. Strategies of resource-exploitation and conservation were thus essential in dealing successfully with this situation in the long-term. The question of how the Romans dealt with the uncertainty of natural reserves and the unpredictability of consumption is very much at the core of the debate on the non-agricultural ancient economy. The issue revolves around whether their decisions and actions merely reflect a 'substitution of resource sources' mentality – that is, exploiting a particular resource until depletion, after which new possibilities were simply explored further afield – or if optimal extraction strategies may be identified. In other words, how rational were the Romans in their exploitation of raw materials, and to which extent did they counteract over-exploitation for economic and ecological reasons? With this panel, we would like to explore if, when, where and how the Romans pursued a harmonious balance between the limited availability of a particular resource and the law of supply and demand. We are hereby particularly interested in identifying measures that show environmental concerns in their management strategies. This may be through specific case studies on both smaller and larger territorial scales, or by reflecting on the issue on a more theoretical level. We especially welcome proposals that focus on innovative approaches and/or draw on inter-disciplinary datasets (geo-and bioarchaeology, paleoecology, etc.).

The purpose of this work is to investigate some cases of anatomical changes in woody tissue due to biotic and abiotic
factors in order to decode wood exploitation. The observation of the interaction between wood tissue and biotic factors, like fungi,
insects and marine borers, and alteration products by chemical and physical agents could help to decode wood exploitation and
formation processes of archaeobotanical material. Therefore a review of alterations of wood could be useful. In this work the results
of taphonomical analyses carried out on wood material from archaeological contexts in south-eastern Italy (hearth structures,
waterlogged material, burials) were proposed.

Human societies established productive strategies in order to obtain the material resources needed for their day- to-day life, including firewood and timber. These strategies were determined by the environmental supply, and also by the cultural characteristics and technical capacities of these communities. This paper presents charcoal analyses data from four Chalcolithic and Bronze Age open-air settlements located in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula and occupied during the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC. These results contribute to the knowledge of the exploitation of wooden resources, of the territories where these resources were collected, and of the firewood and timber production process. The identified wood taxa point to a diversified exploitation of the territory, where firewood and timber were collected and/or felled in the deciduous woodland, the river banks and scrubland areas. The wooden resources consumed in each site allowed us to hypothesize about the territory of each community. The characteristics of wood parts used, degree of the tree-ring curvature, the minimum diameter of twigs or logs, the presence of tyloses or gum deposits, of reaction wood, of scars, etc.- as well as other data from archaeological contexts, such as the length of the post holes were all taken into account.