Animal resources and meat-based diet in the Iron Age: The case of north-western France (Brittany and Lower Normandy)

The study of animal resources and the place of a meat-based diet in protohistoric cultures has largely been developed from the northern France corpus. But what about populations located further west, in territories that were largely open to the Channel and Atlantic coasts? Thanks to the pertinent revival of archaeological research carried out since the 1950s, the design of experimental protocols and the comparison of bone corpora, this thesis is able to provide some initial thoughts on how these cultures managed their terrestrial and maritime environment. The chronological evolution of practices and their regional variations testify to a constant relationship between socio-economic choices, the management of space and the exploitation of a diversified natural environment. In this publication, we discover the specificity of animal resource exploitation in very different and sometimes singular natural environments, such as islands and coasts, that are essential to small or large-scale economic circuits. Putting the results into perspective, within a broader geographical framework, allows us to highlight the differences and similarities of practices between these human groups in western territories and those in other regions of Gaul during the First and Second Iron Ages.