De la formation géologique à la tranchée : trouver et comprendre les sites archéologiques menacés par les travaux d’aménagement du territoire

Earth sciences were used since the earliest paleolithic research in the 19th century to find archaeological sites and to study the adaptation of past societies to environmental changes. They took an important role in the preventive archaeology systems developed from the 1980s to save the remains threatened by territory development. This contribution aims to illustrate the multidisciplinary approach developed over several decades, from documentary and cartographic studies to the opening of test pits. It also intends to show some contributions of geoarchaeology and preventive archaeology to geomorphological questions, to the reconstruction of landscape dynamics and to the question of human impact on the environment. The examples presented were chosen in different geographical contexts, in the south of France, Paris basin and Alsace, from the paleolithic to the modern era, to illustrate the potential of the approach which would benefit from being applied more systematically.