Romain Mensan is a freelance geoarchaeologist and François-Xavier Fauvelle's main co-investigator on various sites from Morocco to Ethiopia.
Geoarchaeological analysis and stratigraphy, operation management
Romain Mensan is a geoarchaeologist. A specialist in field operations management (excavation, prospecting) for the past twenty years, he is also an expert in stratigraphy and geoarchaeological analysis. The geoarchaeological approach to populations of the past enables us, on the one hand, to understand human-environment interaction and, on the other, to highlight the changes in landscape and climate that have conditioned the conservation of archaeological levels. Romain Mensan is active in two main fields of investigation : south-western France and Africa.
His work in southwestern France focuses on settlement dynamics in the Upper Paleolithic (40-20 ka cal. BP). His work involves characterizing the geological and geomorphological contexts of prehistoric occupations, mainly in rock shelters and caves. He has taken part in numerous programs in the Vézère valley (Dordogne) and in the Pyrenees.
His scientific experience on African soil began in 2004 as an archaeologist at the Franco-Egyptian Center for the Study of the Temples of Karnak (CFEETK, Louksor), studying the sanctuary of the Great Temple of Amun-Re (central zone). This work continued until 2008. Prior to this, various missions in Syria and Jordan had enabled him to learn about the great variability of archaeological contexts. His first fieldwork in Ethiopia, in the Rift Valley, consisted in establishing an archaeo-sequence in the Great Lakes region for the period covering the late Pleistocene and Holocene (40 ka cal. BP to the present day). The Late Stone Age Sequence in Ethiopia program, directed by François Bon (University of Toulouse) and Assamerew Dessie (ARCCH, Addis Ababa), used a geoarchaeological approach to understand human settlements in relation to the evolution of the Rift Lake Basin.
