Université Montpellier 3 Paul Valéry,

Site Saint-Charles, France

March 2023

The objective of this conference is to highlight the place of raw earth in the funerary sphere during the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, to understand its formal complexity and the variability of techniques. These topics will be addressed from a comparative perspective on a large geographic scale. If today the earthen materials constitute a privileged focus of study for the Neolithic and the Bronze Age periods, its use in funerary contexts remains poorly known and therefore rarely investigated. Recent archaeological discoveries in the Mediterranean area demonstrate the importance of an approach on a larger geographical scale, inducing complementarity between different fields of research (in funerary archaeology, building archaeology, geoarchaeology, ethnology).

Several lines of analysis will be considered: the role of raw earth and its different formal variations within the funerary space, its technical specificities as an architectural element or an architectural system, its role in funerary semantics.

The aim of the meeting is to discuss and compare data from various geographical horizons over a long period. Moreover, beyond the archaeological examples, it seems important to open this conference to ethnological examples.

All uses of raw earth will be considered, both those concerning the interior and exterior architectural arrangements of the tomb, as well as the elements and furnishings (furniture and building elements) related to funerary practices and uses related to the treatment of the corpse. 

Important dates