1The coastal zone, where the terrestrial world whose limits were unknown for millennia meets an even more unfathomable maritime world, is a special area of contact between two apparent opposites, between two major zones of procurement, and between two very different modes of transport.

2As far as archaeology can ascertain, humans have settled along the coasts from very early on. Today, signs of their presence are sometimes submerged, given the fluctuations in sea level. Among coastal populations, some deliberately turned their backs to the sea and made little or no use of its resources, while others largely relied on its bounty. Shell middens, harbour installations of all periods, or maritime villae with their fish ponds and “private beaches” are proof enough, just as the complete absence of the presence of the sea in the food remains or modes of transport among some communities solely dependent on the inland despite their coastal location bears witness to the contrary.

3Coastal zones were perceived as either welcoming and attractive, or hostile and dangerous, depending on their configuration (e.g. rocks, beaches, cliffs, dunes or lagoons). Indeed, living beside the sea requires adaptation to a particularly fluid environment at the mercy of the tides and of more permanent and sometimes brutal events such as flooding or erosion. The build-up of sand created the sandbanks and marshlands of the Languedoc and Atlantic coasts, but also caused the formation of lagoons and the spectacular retreat of the coastline experienced by several medieval port sites found inland today, such as the port of Quintovic (Manche), whose location has been confidently pinpointed by Inrap’s archaeologists over the last few years. On the downside, we also witness with despair the gradual loss to the sea of important sites wiped out by major tides.

4Whether they use or endure their environment, coastal communities have worked relentlessly to regulate and control these extremes. From protohistoric times onwards various attempts were made to stabilise the coast and build permanent installations, at least intended to last several generations. Harbour sites were curated – i.e. protected and dredged – from Classical times onwards. To cite but one example, the port of Marseille, partly excavated on the Place Jules-Verne site, demonstrates on the basis of the Greek and Roman quays and the deposits of the Hellenistic period, that people have encroached on the sea by dumping, thus extending the port city and building in part on the Lacydon inlet. Furthermore, silting was significant in the vast inlet that forms the old harbour: several Roman dredging vessels were discovered there. As is well known, sea levels have been slowly but inexorably rising since the Last Glaciation. Its rise can be measured; the Cosquer cave, also in the region of Marseille, provides an example, since today a diver has to plunge 37m below sea level to reach the cave.

5That humans have expended so much energy to live in these ambivalent spaces between sea and land since the beginnings of prehistory indicates that there were clear advantages in doing so. It is up to archaeologists to go beyond understanding humanity’s ability to master sometimes hostile environments and find through their investigations the key, as the historian Alain Corbain put it, to this “desire for the sea”, a desire born long before people started theorising about it.

Detail of the stratigraphy of the peat layers at the Marsillargues site in Languedoc.

Agrandir Original (jpeg, 2,1M)

Recently studied by Émilie Léa, Inrap. It is within this dark brown to black layer that traces of human occupation were found, dating from between the 9^th and 11^th centuries, a period when the environment transitioned from a lagoon-marine to a terrestrial setting.

Photo: C. Jorda, Inrap.