L'approvisionnement en matières premières dans les systemes de production lithique : la dimension spatiale de la technologie

Raw material procurement and diffusion within lithic production systems as a means to determine space through technology. - Raw material procurement ineluctably constitutes the first stage on any processing sequence of lihic production. The most conspicuous advantage of the studies dealing with raw material procurement and spatial diffusion lies en their spatial implications which will partly condition the interpretation of the complementary datas as early as this first stage of the anafysis. Hence, it is interesting from a methodological point of view to integrate as early as possible these technological, economic and spatial datas to the other fields ones going to the pluridisciplinary interpretation of archaeological assemblages. Procurement cannot be considered without referrin to its various interconnections with the social and cultural system in which it is tightly interwoven. Consequently, the numerous functional interrelationships between the various subsystems of subsistence, technology and at last economy makes procurement analysis complex. First of all, procurement is systematically describe from the single point of view of subsistence and access to environmental resources in order to define raw material procurement and diffusion territories. Then, the discussion will turn to the economic and social implications deriving from the spatially structured technological behaviours that have been evidence and which concern raw material acquisition and consumption and can even reveal genuine strategies organised within the subsistence area. A short diachronic view of West Europe Paleolithic cases emphasizes the strict and very early adaptation of procurement consiraints to material susbsistence conditions by human groups during the Pleistocene.