At the scale of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, the main habitats of De & ucirc;le-Escaut are grouped together, as their name suggests, along the valleys of the De & ucirc;le and the Scheldt, including the secondary valleys of the Scarpe and the Sens & eacute;e. This sector includes more than a dozen sites. To the north of the Lys basin and at the junction with that of the Aa, three other sites mark a second concentration of habitats located about 40 km northeast of the De & ucirc;le valley sites. The discovery of Rebreuve-Ranchicourt occupies a somewhat particular geographical position, halfway between these two poles. This occupation includes three diachronic buildings, to which two pits can potentially be attached. The multidisciplinary approach put in place has made it possible to address several aspects of this occupation, from the construction of the buildings to their abandonment, focusing on the domestic, agricultural, and craft activities that took place inside and around the dwellings. The two large buildings of Rebreuve-Ranchicourt find elements of easy morphometric comparison in the De & ucirc;le-Escaut cultural sphere, with a certain homogeneity in the length of the buildings, generally between 17 and 26 meters long. Building 1000, of smaller size, is rarer. One of the major interests of the Rebreuve-Ranchicourt habitat site is its building 200. The construction methods are unusual, with oversized foundations that remain difficult to interpret. A reconstruction phase of part of the building could be considered, but has not been highlighted through the various stratigraphic and micromorphological studies. Similarly, a simple abandonment of the building does not explain the impressive quantities of discovered artifacts and in such good condition. In fact, this material data is rare in dwellings. Generally, it is not the foundation structures that yield artifacts, but the pits and occupation levels associated with the houses. For us, the field data and studies conducted on the site converge towards the highlighting of a complete destruction of the building, probably accompanied by a recovery of timber. The homogeneity of the archaeological material and the absence of alterations testify to conditions of rapid burial compatible with a deliberate leveling action. One plausible explanation for this leveling may be related to the erection of a new building nearby, building 700. Thanks to the destruction of this building, many traces of the daily life of its occupants have been preserved over several millennia. While the entire lithic corpus fits perfectly into the known acquisition, management, and production patterns of flint tools for the De & ucirc;le-Escaut cultural group, the scarcity of finished products in exogenous materials raises questions about its integration into networks of circulation of highly valued objects. The discovery of a Bartonian flint blade during the nearby excavation of Houdain could indicate an insertion of these populations into networks of object circulation that may be broader than suggested by the assemblage from the buildings. The general composition of the series and the macrolithic tooling is comparable to the productions of sites in the De & ucirc;le-Escaut group with building plans. Quantitatively, it is a small series, characterized by fragmentation and significant recovery of supports. The types of tools are also in line with the regional Late Neolithic assemblages: hammerstones, burins, and intermediate pieces. While the cup-shaped grinding stone does not stand out in the Late Neolithic productions, this tool is less frequently encountered than rimmed grinding stones. It raises questions about the possible significance of this morphological difference: functional, chronological, or other. The ceramic assemblage finds its best comparisons with sites located further north in the Lys valley, with the same decorative registers of smooth or digitate cords placed under the rim or in rupture of the body. These decorations exist in the De & ucirc;le valley corpus, but in a more discreet manner. The absence of short-necked and high-keeled vessels at Rebreuve-Ranchicourt, and generally in the sites of the Lys valley, consti-tutes another notable difference with the eastern De & ucirc;le-Escaut occupations. The presence of decorated ceramics and the absence of bell-beaker pottery sherds invite placing this corpus in the middle phase of the De & ucirc;le-Escaut cultural complex. Thus, the cross-referencing of the furniture studies agrees to integrate the Rebreuve-Ranchicourt site within the De & ucirc;le-Escaut cultural complex. The sites located north of the Lys valley find comparative parallels sometimes more rel-evant with the Rebreuve-Ranchicourt occupation than the sites located to the east. Furniture studies have also focused on the spatialization of activities carried out inside and outside of this dwelling, with debatable results. Projecting a functional determination near the place of discovery of the movable remains is tempting, but the exploitation of the results obtained lacks convincing parallels for the interior of dwellings. Furthermore, it remains difficult to clearly attribute the furniture to the occupation of the building itself. Finally, the characterization of actions laden with mean-ing, such as breaking a complete millstone and placing it in a former post hole, remains difficult to grasp and could only be interpreted from a functional point of view. This habitat also complements the information for the internal chronology of the Late Neolithic. Thus, the Rebreuve-Ranchicourt site seems to be able to be placed in a middle stage of the Late Neolithic, as it is currently defined, notably by the absence of bell-beaker elements. However, these results are confronted with later chronometric dates, coinciding with a terminal stage of the Late Neolithic.

L’intensification récente des travaux d’aménagement donnant lieu à des opérations d’archéologie préventive dans la plaine de Troyes (Aube) a entraîné une expansion remarquable du volume des données, contribuant à modifier nettement la vision que l’on pouvait avoir de l’occupation humaine ancienne. La densité et la richesse des sites de certaines périodes archéologiques jusqu’à présent inégalement documentées suscitent de nombreuses questions dépassant l’intérêt propre de chaque site. Ce renouvellement en profondeur de l’information touche particulièrement la fin de l’âge du Bronze et le premier âge du Fer. Le coeur des données a trait au système d’habitat et à son évolution qui peut être considéré comme le principal indicateur utile à la compréhension, bien qu’indirecte, de la trame de peuplement ancienne. Le travail d’analyse du système d’habitat, couplé aux données principales du système économique agropastoral, a été mené à deux échelles : d’une part à grande échelle, celle d’un groupe de terroirs, par le biais de la documentation des fouilles préventives menées sur le parc logistique de l’Aube (PLA), d’autre part, à plus petite échelle, celle de la plaine de Troyes, sur une zone de 15 km de rayon environ. Ce dialogue permet de détecter et de discuter des régularités ou des irrégularités dans la trame globale du système d’habitat et de proposer des scenarii locaux d’évolution. L’assise du parc logistique de l’Aube, en termes de représentativité, fournit un socle de données solide. L’étendue spatiale de l’opération et les découvertes nombreuses se rapportant à ces périodes autorisent une vision quantifiée et plus seulement qualitative des rythmes d’occupation de l’habitat comme de l’évolution du système agraire. Certaines catégories de données telles que celles relatives à l’économie végétale ou animale, dont chaque phase a livré un nombre conséquent d’échantillons, peuvent être considérées comme représentatives non seulement au niveau du terroir étudié mais également à l’échelle de la Champagne méridionale. Du point de vue du système d’habitat, la courte expérience d’un regroupement de population (hameau ou village) à la fin de l’âge du Bronze tranche avec la trame courante de l’habitat dispersé protohistorique. L’analyse conduit à distinguer six grandes phases dans l’évolution du système, que l’on retrouve à l’échelle du bassin de Troyes. Se dégagent également, à petite échelle, plusieurs pôles de densité forte qui pourraient signaler une structuration du territoire qui a disparu ultérieurement, pendant le second âge du Fer. L’économie agropastorale et son évolution sont aussi sollicitées en tant que principal indicateur de la vie économique et des capacités de reproduction des sociétés passées. La discussion finale aborde quelques thèmes qu’il importera de préciser : sur la nature et la valeur du cycle économique identifié, sur la thèse du caractère fondamentalement dispersé du système d’habitat protohistorique et de sa résistance à l’urbanisation, ainsi que sur la résilience des sociétés agropastorales face aux changements climatiques globaux enregistrés à la fin de l’âge du Bronze et au premier âge du Fer.

The recent intensification of construction work and resulting preventive archaeological excavations on the Troyes Plain (Aube, France) have produced a remarkable increase in the amount of data available, considerably modifying our vision of early human occupation there. For some previously poorly known archaeological periods the density of sites with abundant finds raises a number of questions that surpass the individual interest of each site. This major renewal of the available evidence particularly concerns the late Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. Most data relate to settlements and their development, thus providing an important body of evidence for gaining a broader understanding, albeit indirect, of the whole pattern of settlement. Analysis of the settlement system, coupled with the main data on the agricultural economy, was undertaken on two scales: on the large scale of a group of terroirs, using results of preventive excavations in the Parc Logistique de l'Aube (PLA), and on the smaller scale of the Troyes Plain, over a zone of about 15 km radius. This dialogue enables the regularities and irregularities in the overall settlement system to be detected and discussed, and local scenarios of change to be proposed. The dataset from the Parc Logistique de l'Aube is sound and representative. The spatial extent of the project (250 hectares) and the numerous discoveries dated to these periods allow a quantified vision of both the tempo of site occupation and changes in the agrarian system. Study of the settlement system was based on 25.5 hectares of extensively excavated zones investigated between 2005 and 2008. These include 84 spatially and chronologically distinct occupation sites, defined on the basis of 437 reliably dated archaeological features. Three generic indicators of their main dimensions (surface area, number of features, storage feature volume) were recorded for these occupations and are presented in histogram form with a chronological resolution of 50 years. Certain categories of data such as those relating to the plant and animal economy, for which each phase produced a significant number of samples, can be considered representative not only at the terroir level but also on the scale of southern Champagne. As regards the settlement system, the short-lived episode of a clustering of population (hamlet or village) at the end of the Bronze Age contrasts with the standard pattern of scattered protohistoric dwellings. The analysis shows six major phases in the development of the system and these are also visible throughout the Troyes basin: from -2200 to -1350, from -1350 to -950, from -950 to -750, from -750 to -620, from -620 to -450 and lastly from -450 to -250. On the smaller scale, several poles of high density stand out; they could indicate the emergence of a territorial structure that subsequently disappeared, during the later Iron Age. In addition, the agropastoral economy and its development provide evidence for the economic life and the capacities for reproduction of past societies. The dynamic nature of agriculture is attested by a large quantity of evidence, including a wide range of plants. The system is based on 15 cultivated species dominated by the production of cereals, with relatively few changes over time. While the range of crops and the economic importance of each plant show little variation, a change can be seen in the wild plants associated with the remains of the domestic species. This is an indication of changes in agricultural practices. The faunal evidence follows a rather different pattern, as data are abundant for the end of the Bronze Age and this is followed by a period between -750 and -550 with very few faunal remains. For the end of the Bronze Age, there are no special trends in consumption, herds are made up of the usual domestic triad and there are very few wild animal bones. The final discussion addresses a number of open questions. What is the nature and value of the economic cycle identified through these quantitative variables? Can one go beyond the hypothesis of the fundamentally scattered nature of the protohistoric settlement system, as one observes a slow but irrepressible trend towards more long-term occupation through a reduction in mobility between generations? On a similar note, the presence of short-lived villages at the end of the Bronze Age provides additional evidence for considering the issue of possible social resistance to the constraints of urbanisation in continental Europe. Lastly, all these data also fuel the debate on the degree of resilience of protohistoric farming societies to the climate changes recorded for the end of the Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age.