Processus, transitions, crises : quels concepts pour saisir le devenir des sociétés anciennes ?

The phenomena of "transition" (be they ecological or, for example, "gender") present in today's world can be defined as the deliberate projection over a controlled time period of a situation A towards a situation B that can potentially be evaluated in terms of success or failure. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that one-off projects might have been thought of in this way in the distant past (for example, the construction of a monument), but perhaps without affecting the 'fundamentals' of an entire society, and running the risk of a real 'collapse'. Moreover, a presentation of this kind implies a certain conception of "free will", if not "rationality", according to which agents are able to make appropriate choices from an informed list of alternatives - including religious ones. The concept of transition is also used to illustrate three different things: either some form of continuity, when it can be suggested by relationships and processes (between humans and non-humans), or, on the contrary, discontinuity, when these links seem to disappear, or when a certain vagueness remains, sometimes due to the researcher's lack of information. In well-documented cases, it is possible to interpret transitions in terms of causality, taking care to adopt a multifactorial approach. These questions are isomorphic to our way of dividing up (pre)History, and therefore to questions of collective identity. Temporal parts and sub-parts are used when describing a series of events that borrow their names from the field of medicine (crisis, resilience). We aim to provide insight into Late prehistoric contexts, for the metal ages of southern France, or the Hittites, for whom an alternative explanation has recently been put forward in relation to the changes observed in their natural environment. ; Les phénomènes « de transition » (qu’ils soient écologiques ou, par ex., « de genre ») dont il est principalement question dans nos actualités contemporaines correspondent à la projection volontariste dans un temps maîtrisé d’une ...