Lateral river erosion impacts the preservation of Neolithic enclosures in alluvial plains

Lateral river erosion impacts the preservation of Neolithic enclosures in alluvial plains

Situating prehistoric sites in their past environment helps us to understand their functionality and the organization of early sedentary human societies. However, this is a challenge as the natural environment constantly evolves through time and erases these constructions, especially along riverbank...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports Vol. 13; no. 1; p. 16566
Main Authors: Grimaud, Jean-Louis, Gouge, Patrick, Huyghe, Damien, Petit, Christophe, Lestel, Laurence, Eschbach, David, Lemay, Martin, Catry, Jean, Quaisse, Ibtissem, Imperor, Amélie, Szewczyk, Léo, Mordant, Daniel
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 02-10-2023
Nature Publishing Group
Nature Portfolio
Subjects:
631/181/27
704/445/215
Alluvial plains
Archaeology and Prehistory
Earth Sciences
Erosion rates
Flood protection
Geomorphology
Humanities and Social Sciences
multidisciplinary
Natural environment
Neolithic
Radiocarbon dating
River banks
Rivers
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Sciences of the Universe
Seine River
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Summary:Situating prehistoric sites in their past environment helps us to understand their functionality and the organization of early sedentary human societies. However, this is a challenge as the natural environment constantly evolves through time and erases these constructions, especially along riverbanks, thus biasing the archaeological record. This study introduces a reassessment of the paleo-landscape evolution around the Neolithic enclosures at the Noyen-sur-Seine site based on new field observations as well as the synthesis of (un)published and new radiocarbon dating. Contrary to the initial hypothesis, our results show that the Noyen enclosures were not built along a Neolithic Seine River: the nearby channels were active in the Middle Age and Early Modern periods. Therefore, the results show that the enclosures were originally much larger: only a fraction that survived river erosion (lateral migration rates up to 2–3 m yr −1 estimated during the nineteenth century) has been preserved. Instead, an abandoned Mesolithic Seine River served as a natural delimitation of the SE part of the Neolithic enclosures. These results indicate that Neolithic enclosures in alluvial settings are often only partly preserved and that societies from that period lived farther away from active rivers than originally thought, where they were protected from floods.
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ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-023-43849-6