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International audience; This paper describes the workflow of the Grammateus project, from gathering data on Greek documentary papyri to the creation of a web application. The first stage is the selection of a corpus and the choice of metadata to record: papyrology specialists gather data from printed editions, existing online resources and digital facsimiles. In the next step, this data is transformed into the EpiDoc standard of XML TEI encoding, to facilitate its reuse by others, and processed for HTML display. We also reuse existing text transcriptions available on . Since these transcriptions may be regularly updated by the scholarly community, we aim to access them dynamically. Although the transcriptions follow the EpiDoc guidelines, the wide diversity of the papyri as well as small inconsistencies in encoding make data reuse challenging. Currently, our data is available on an institutional GitLab repository, and we will archive our final dataset according to the FAIR principles.

In the field of global history, especially when it comes to « histoire croisée », the use of metaphors describing the vertical organization of a society, its structuration into layers or into overlapping systems, is common. The temptation to use a second metaphor, calling everything a “network”, is also very important in this domain, whose objects of study are often transnational organizations with multiple branches, intertwined within umbrella organizations, sharing board members and including several levels of secretariats and subcommittees (Grandjean 2017). However, the use of these images is not limited to historical studies, since we use the same vocabulary in other disciplines to describe social situations or textual structures. When we go beyond the metaphor to develop a formal analysis, we often produce multigraphs who, because they simultaneously express horizontal and vertical relationships, are generally unsuitable for the analysis (and visualisation, except in very simple cases). If the “exploratory” dimension of social network analysis – and especially the fact that its display is relatively subjective – is often a subject of criticism, we propose here to play with the visual representation to show precisely how an original modelling can improve the reading of complex graphs, and helping to restore a “morphological” (Moretti 1999, 68) information where disorder seems to prevail. Based on two examples from archives mapping and theatre character networks, this paper proposes a reflection on the different ways to take account of verticality in graphs. In particular, we are developing a way to impose a macro-structure to a network, allowing a two-dimensions view that reflects the hierarchical affiliations of its components. We will see that this method, by constructing a stable visual representation in time and space, helps to compare different types of relationships and/or different time states of the graph.

In Paleolithic settlement models for Africa, West Africa has been neglected, if not entirely ignored, due to an obvious lack of research in the region but also of the availability of reliable and precise chronostratigraphic data. However, since 1997 research conducted at Ounjougou (Mali) has significantly updated our view of the West African Middle Stone Age with the establishment of the first archaeological and chronostratigraphic sequence and use of a comprehensive geomorphological approach. This site complex has provided most of the data for MIS 5 to 3, but in order to document MIS 2, one must turn to the Falémé Valley (Senegal), where data is now available from research conducted since 2011. Complemented with other scattered data from West Africa, it is now possible to propose a nearly continuous techno-cultural history for the Upper Pleistocene, supplemented by substantive evidence from the Early Holocene. We can now demonstrate significant diversity in lithic production systems, the probable times of their appearance and disappearance, and their very rapid rate of change. The Middle Stone Age in West Africa thus reflects a unique techno-cultural mosaic and technological history, very different from that observed in the Sahara and North Africa.