During the last ten years, the French institutions in charge of archaeology (CNRS, INRAP - national agency for rescue archaeology-, National Museum of Natural History) provided altogether nearly 30 permanent positions of archaeozoologists. The French community of archaeozoologists is now composed of more than 55 permanent scientists, researchers and engineers as well, and of the same number of post-docs and PhD. Most of them have accepted to appear in the yearbook which is now available on the ICAZ web site.

Owing to this national effort, several groups of archaeozoologists have increased, and begun to weave a national network: Aix-en-Provence, Besançon-Dijon, Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Nice, Paris, Toulouse, Tours. One of the Paris’ groups strongly increased in size during these last five years. It is now one of the most important group of archaeozoology in the world, pooling together 35 people: 28 people from the laboratory of archaeozoology of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, four people from the archaeozoological lab of the Oise Valley in Compiègne (CRAVO) and three people from the archaeoparasitology lab in the University of Reims.

This group, which was founded by François Poplin at the beginning of the eighties, has had an important teaching and training role during the last twenty years in collaboration with the Paris University in Nanterre, providing more than 25 of the present-day professional French archaeozoologists. It is also the anchoring point for the edition of the European Journal Anthropozoologica , which publishes not only archaeozoological synthesis (see e.g. the proceedings of the ICAZ conference in Constance, 1994), but all research papers about the past and present relationships between animal and human beings. This group also contribute to the curation of the patrimonial collections and databases of the National Museum of Natural History, and to current faunal diagnostic and analyses for rescue archaeology, mainly in the sub- branch of Compiègne. The archaeozoology unit of the Paris Museum aims to contribute to the history of the relationships between the societies and the animal world, mainly during the end of the Late Glacial and during the Holocene; complementarily, the laboratory of Prehistory of the Museum deals with the earlier Pleistocene periods. Included in the department of Ecology and Biodiversity, the archaeozoology unit develops four main programmes:

1 - Man, environment and biodiversity;

2 - Domestication and animal products: techno-economic approach;

3 - Man-animal relationships, bestiaries and socio-cultural characterisation;

4 - Expansion and improvement of archaeozoological techniques.

Several of the members of the group are in charge of archaeological field work or excavations (Brittany, Corsica, Pompeii...), and all are involved in one or several archaeological field programme, in home country or abroad. It thus contributes to the French archaeological mission in Chile (Patagonia), Peru (Qebrada del Buro, Moche), Equator, Guyana, Lesser Indies, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somaliland, Egypt (Saqqara, Alexandria), Oman (Sweyr) and United Arab Emirates (Fujjeira- Bithnah), Kazakhstan (Berel), China, Russia, Cyprus (Shillourokambos), Greece (Tasos), and to several other foreign missions (Aleutian Istalnds, Kenya, South Africa, British Islands, Iran, Irak Germany...).

Osteoarchaeozoology is of course the main technique which is developed in the group, for large and small mammals, birds and fishes. Several scientists are also dealing with marine molluscs. But, in the field of archaeozoological techniques, one of the goals consists in developing and promoting “new techniques”. As early as 1992, it begun to use ancient DNA (Hardy et al., 1992, Ancient DNA Newsletter, 1 (2): 15-16), experimenting new collaborative procedures. During the nineties, it developed new collaborations in order to adapt stable isotopes techniques to the question of the seasonal migration of animals and of the husbandry practices. This work developed so well, that the CNRS and the Museum accepted to fund a common isotopic facility for human sciences, under the responsibility of the archaeozoological group. The group also experiment the application of the modern techniques of shape analyses to the study of archaeological animal bones. In the sub-branch of Reims, Pr. F. Bouchet develops archaeoparasitologic approaches.

The archaeozoologists’ group in Paris plays the leader role for three main programmes. The most important one is called “Early diffusion of domestic bovids”. It is granted by the European Science Foundation. It brings together four ancient DNA labs and 25 archaeozoological research groups spread in 13 European countries (Austria, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, United Kingdom), plus Israel and the USA. It aims to trace the spread of the early domestic bovids in the Middle and near East and in Europe, and to discuss the question of acculturation which are bound to this transfer. The group is also a leader for another project which is granted by the Institut Français de la Biodiversité. It aims to organise and to use archaeozoological data, anywhere in the world, in order to contribute to the knowledge of the mechanisms involved in the relationships between the human societies and the biodiversity of animals at the scale of the Holocene period. The third project is a patrimonial database of archaeozoological data of France (see presentation in this ICAZ letter).

The recent publications (since 1999) of the Paris Museum lab of archaeozoology are available on the web at this adress: http://www.mnhn.fr/mnhn/anc/esa/esa.html. The group is working now to make available several services, such as le list of the archaeozoological references in its library...

More informations at this adress: http://www.mnhn.fr/mnhn/anc/esa/esa.html

Jean-Denis Vigne, CNRS head researcher