The contributions of the settlement to the understanding of the rural societies of Northern Gaul in the 10th century

Résumé En

The purpose this article is to discuss about the 10th century from archaeological data and especially those concerning rural settlements located in the northern half of France. Settlements with military (clods, sites of height, etc.) or religious (monasteries, priory, etc.) character are not addressed in this study without being ignored. Based on a corpus of 383 sites attesting an occupation in the 10th century, the study attempts to analyze successively the dynamics of occupation, the composition, the topography and the economy of the settlements in order to identify singularities peculiar to this period. The examination of the dynamics is carried out starting from the creations, abandons and duration of the occupations. Through the composition of the settlement, it is particularly the buildings, the equipment, the religious buildings and the burials which are approached. The topographic analysis focuses on the organization of farmstead as well as that of the agglomerations while the analysis of the small finds discovered on the sites makes it possible to sketch hypotheses on the social and economicnature of the habitats.