The Medieval Village as seen by French Archaeogeograhy

International audienceIn France, morphological analysis of land parcels and road networks has been overhauled since the 1990s, giving rise to a discipline, “archaeogeography”, with clearly defined methodological and epistemological contours. The purpose of this paper is to show as simply and clearly as possible what an archaeogeographical approach—focused on spatial and morphological questions—can add to our knowledge of villages, and notably those that still exist, not those that have disappeared and been dug up by archaeologists in the vicinity of current habitats. The aim is to demonstrate the benefits of an alternative (French) methodology, using different scales to that of archaeological or village sites, and looking at other aspects of the subject. For this, the methodology and the principal scientific results applied to village contexts will be presented