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Settlement Patterns and Landscape Change: The Late Neolithic and the Bronze Age of the Marais Poitevin Area of Western France

It is, with a few exceptions, only in very recent years and with works such as that by Guilaine and his colleagues on the Abri Jean-Cros (Guilaine et al. 1979) that the site locational and ecological approaches have made their appearance in the French archaeological literature. Studies of this type are still not common, despite the richness of certain areas of France in prehistoric settlement evidence and the existence of a body of geomorphological research which often makes this type of approach particularly attractive. The present article attempts to use both geomorphological and settlement evidence for a consideration of the relationship between changes in the landscape and patterns of site distribution in the Marais poitevin area of western France during the period 2800–600 bc. The basis for the study is provided by locational information on a series of Late Neolithic fortified settlement sites which has been discovered in this part of France in recent years. These impressive sites have a striking distribution pattern which invites interpretation in terms of their landscape setting. Geomorphological and archaeological evidence makes it possible to reconstruct at least in outline the development of this landscape during the later prehistoric period, and to suggest what it may have been like at the time the sites were occupied and how it may have affected their foundation and their abandonment. The evidence relating to landscape development is crucial to our understanding of the prehistoric sites and no apology is made for considering it in some detail below. Bronze Age as well as Neolithic sites have been included in the final analysis. This allows the Late Neolithic fortified settlements to be viewed in a broader context and related to changes in site distribution patterns over a period of approximately two thousand years.