Pollens, charbons de bois et sédiments : l'action humaine et la végétation, le cas de la grotte d'Antonnaire (Montmaur-en-Diois, Drôme)

Abstract

The Antonnaire cave (at Montmaur-en-Diois, Drôme) probably first inhabited at the Neolithic period has given important data in terms of sedimentology, anthracology and palynology. Thanks to those techniques, it has been possible to reach the following conclusions. At Antonnaire, about 6000 BP, at the height of 1200 meters, the cave was used as a sheepcot by man. The vegetal landscape was then open. The deciduous-leaved oak-trees, country elm-trees, yew-trees and fir-trees that is to say the mid-European usual trees testified to the dampness of the climate. At the final Bronze age, arborescent taxons such as the Scotch fir and the deciduous-leaved oak-tree became fewer and fewer. The landscape showed box-tree clusters connected with a decrease in the evolution of the oak dynamics series. Man's action, obvious since the Chasseen age, went on increasing to the point of impoverishing climax forest formations. That irreversible evolution or the vegetal landscape was due to an early pastoral expansion which very soon implied the moving of herds to the better grass-land areas probably from valleys towards altitude meadows.