The "Human societies and environments in the circum-Mediterranean area from the Pleistocene to the early Holocene" congress, which will be held at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès on the 8th and 9th of March 2021, is organized as a tribute to Émilie Campmas, a young CNRS researcher who passed away on March 8, 2019. Hired in 2018 by the CNRS and member of the TRACES laboratory in Toulouse, she was developing original and innovative research issues on the role played by coastal zones in the evolution of human societies, particularly amongst Middle Stone Age hominins in northern Africa.

The aim of this event is to bring together, following a diachronic and multidisciplinary approach, zooarchaeologists, palaeontologists, malacologists, taphonomists, ethnologists, anthropologists, archaeologists and palaeoenvironmental specialists, around the topic of coastal occupations from the Palaeolithic to the present time.

In order to gather as many researchers who have collaborated with Émilie Campmas as possible, the congress will also focus on other topics, in particular new methods developed in zooarchaeology, archaeo- and ethno-malacology, taphonomy, experimental and actualistic approaches, but also, more broadly, on the current research issues of Prehistoric archaeology in North Africa and in other parts of the African continent.

The proceedings of the congress will be published as a special issue in an international journal.

Oral and poster communications (in English or in French) will be presented in the three following sessions:

- Session 1: Coastal occupations from Prehistory to the present time: adaptation of human populations to coastal environments, exploitation of marine resources and contact networks

- Session 2: New data on North African Prehistory: human occupations, palaeoenvironments and relationship with other regions of the continent

- Session 3: The contribution of actualistic approaches to a better perception of human/animal relations in the past

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