L’odyssée des mobilités

This article is intended to be an introduction to the notion of "mobility", increasingly used in archaeology. "Mobility" is at the crossroads of very diverse questions. Indeed, this concept allows at the same time to examine population movements (displacements, migrations), transfers of objects and ideas (exchanges, trade) and their resulting consequences (control of communication networks, interactions). Mobility is a matter of temporalities, spaces, individuals, human groups and modalities determined by a leader or a ruling class. Thus, for archaeologists, it implies questioning a vast repertoire of themes, involving chronology, geography, politics, economy and social matters, which can of course be circumscribed according to the issues developed for the studies of past societies. This specific interlinked feature defines mobility as a main research direction, placed in the centre of many archaeological surveys today. It is all the more requested when textual sources are scarce and in particular for periods preceding Antiquity (this absence being partially filled by DNA or isotopic analyses).

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC

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