L’océan : soupe nourricière ou autoroute de l’information ?

The archaeology of coastal societies raises fundamental research issues to unlock some of the questions posed to prehistoric and protohistoric archaeology. Thus, the use of coastlines in the Paleolithic period would be a source of cognitive and behavioural developments for our species. The ocean as a vector of demic diffusion is also mentioned. Moreover, do seaside lifestyles allow for particular social organization? In France, Spain or Portugal, traces of storage, specialized predation economies or social hierarchies are slow to be discovered. The robustness of the land-sea predation system is probably at stake in the resistance to neolithisation observed during the 6th millennium in maritime enclaves from Portugal to Denmark: more than an alleged "social complexity", it is this research theme that must attract the attention of researchers working around foreshores. The use of foreshores on the Channel and Atlantic coasts reached a peak of visibility in the Mesolithic period, but it is necessary to extend the analyses to the first agro-pastoral societies to better understand the intertwining of predation and production rates. These complex study objects require particular modes of intervention, which combine scientific disciplines to reconstruct the land-sea continuum.