French Version
The union of the natural heritage inventories with historical and archaeological inventories is a necessity to have a vision over the evolution of biodiversity in the long term. However, it is still rarely achieved. The current format is still very poor and improvable, but it is a premiere on the European level.
The Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle collects, preserves and provides the zooarchaeological data in metropolitan France since 2004, and the archaeobotanical data, mainly charcoal (anthracology), seeds and fruits (carpology), pollen (palynology), since 2008. These data are also used to evaluate the progress of research.
Animal and plant remains from archaeological excavations are a source of rich and original information on the history of biodiversity and its interaction with human society. Faced with the knowledge of the diversity of populations and current settlements, they can specify the extinction and biological invasions scenarios of the past, particularly in relation with the Holocene times, during which the influence of climatic factors passed beyond the influence of humans. In addition to the presence, absence or abundance of species, they also provide information on the way human societies used them.
The information collected concerns primarily the names of the species discovered during archaeological excavations carried out on the national territory. The species described fall into five categories: species currently present on the national territory including domestic forms, extinct species of France (reindeer, for example, which still lives in other countries) extinct species (Mammoth, for example) or exotic species.
The information on the site (geographical information, nature of the archaeological operation, name of the manager(s), date of excavation) and the various structures or stratigraphic units that have delivered animal and plant remains (elements of dating, cultural, climatic and physico-chemical, name of the manager(s) of the different studies) are collected. Additional information such as location of storage of the equipment or details of the botanical an wildlife spectrum (absolute frequency of each taxon) appear in the inventory and can be consulted with the Conservation Officer thereof.
The archaeological inventory benefits of the efforts undertaken for over 25 years by the National Archaeology with the CNRS, the Ministry of Culture, some universities and more recently, with INRAP (National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research) to develop naturalistic approaches to metropolitan archaeology.
Data collection is performed as part of research initiated by the CNRS and the MNHN, but also through the participation of volunteer staff (archaeozoologists, archaeobotanists, archaeologists, students ...). Structures of national and international exchanges facilitate the integration of new data.
Only the data of species and subspecies are available on the website of the INPN. Queries on other issues (Search by Genus or family, for example) can be made through the interface of the MNHN collections: http://colhelper.mnhn.fr/ (under "Collections" and then "I2AF Base").
For any informations or requests : callou@mnhn.fr / http://colhelper.mnhn.fr
