Pratiques Rituelles et Symboliques en Méditerranée protohistorique nord-occidentale, VIIIe - Ier siècle avant J.-C. – PRISME

Ritual practices of protohistoric populations along the north occidental Mediterranean Sea are far from being completely known, though these subjects made significant progress in others areas. Our project intend to resume the hole matter of those practices ' except burial ones even we'll take them into account ' by making an exhaustive list of those data in South of France and Spain, then in confronting them in order to a better comprehension of those symbolic facts in their diversity, for the hole time of iron age, until the time of August. In those both areas, there are different populations with convergences yet : Greek or Phoenician settlements, many ethnic cross, recent archaeological matters. Some others areas will be included as comparisons, mainly Italy and continental Europe, in order to cross the lights on those practices. In spiritual things, material facts are rare and it's always difficult to understand them, that's why our field of research definitively must be enlarged, to stimulate connections. We will study at the same time domestic and collective practices, in private houses as in public area or cities. Our work will be based on excavations matter, old or recent, and on the studies of the material relics of those excavations ' with some unpublished main set : bibliography will be passed in review too and we'll open the doors of ethnology and anthropology, without neglected literary sources. That's the way to approach ritual practices in all their diversity, beyond the distorting prism of archaeological stuff and of our own conceptions. Indeed, if antic and protohistoric ritual practices have been widely studied in those past years, the result of those works showed above all the lack of our knowledge and how fragile were our interpretations in spiritual sphere. Various meetings also put in evidence the considerable absence of strong links and common research between continental Europe and southwest of Europe : the Mediterranean Gaul and Spain. Those areas have to be studied side by side with the last development of European archaeology on ritual practices, when they both stand a little on the board of those recent researches, except a few ones. The documentation of those area is well known, especially statuary and public building, but we still need an exhaustive work. This project would take part to the necessary homogenization of the data which all the researchers wish. Once this job completed, real comparisons with continental Europe and Mediterranean world could be made and be significant.