Archimède 1. 2014. Actualité. Imitation, innovation et transfert de technologie...

There is an archaeological facies of Atlantic regions in the west lands of Europe, mainly defined by a set of objects in copper alloys (weapons, tools, items of ornament,...), by common practices (deposit) and by a definite geographical area : the coastal and pre-coastal zones of the Atlantic Ocean. It should be noted that burial practices, domestic architecture or potteries are of different natures, which make it impossible to call it a homogeneous culture. In the Iberian Peninsula, recent findings show that this facies is wider : not only the Mediterranean seaboard, but, more generally, the whole peninsula yield similar material and practices. Since a few years, investigators wonder about the existence of this complex and try to identify its features. It seems then important to examine the distribution and the role of these artifacts in the societies of that time. Three questions guide the research :
- Is it the same facies, whose geographical boundaries would be wider ? The entire production and practices would be then characterized by a high similarity.
- Is it an imitation of the Atlantic facies, made by people from other cultural spheres ? There was therefore a recognition of the ‘Atlantic’ object, that one sought to replicate or to obtain.
- Finally, is it a transfer of technology ? In that case, people had no interest in the object itself, but rather in its improvement : some technological elements familiar to the Western men were adapted with products coming from the East.
A part of the corpus studied in the doctoral dissertation provides some arguments in the debate. The method used allows a valuation and a ranking of each descriptive elements which served previously to establish past typologies. These elements should be compared to each other, in accordance with the variability parameter – too often forgotten –, linked to the imponderables of handicraft. We will thus see that the chronology does not explain everything and that the technological factor played a major role for populations of the Late Bronze Age in the Iberian Peninsula.