L'archéologie maritime de l'islam en Méditerranée occidentale (France) : les épaves racontent l'histoire, contacts économiques et culturels entre Méditerranée et monde franc au début du Moyen-Âge

Drawing on a corpus of shipwrecks from the very beginning of the Middle Ages, as well as recent archaeometric work, the presence and role of Muslim communities in Provence and Languedoc between the 8th and 10th centuries will be explored.

Between material evidence (underwater remains of ships) and terrifying scriptural evocations of sailors, even dangerous pirates, the presence of the "Saracens" has been overlooked, annihilating all other activities.

The assessment established on the basis of these discoveries, now reassessed through the critical and reinterpretive study of textual sources and the systemic analysis of these archaeological remains, offers a different—and clearly much more complex—picture, through these new investigations, of this moment in history when evidence of the populations' activities and material culture is still rare. Here we glimpse one facet of Mediterranean commercial activities from the late 9th or first half of the 10th century.

Beyond confessional and historiographical antagonisms, this recent information deconstructs and transforms our vision of these presences and activities that have remained invisible until now.