L’archéologie entre glaciers et sommets. Dernières découvertes dans les Alpes Bernoises (Cantons de Berne et du Valais, Suisse)

Connus sous le nom populaire de palafittes, les habitats préhistoriques construits sur les rives des lacs subalpins du Néolithique à l’aube de l’âge du Fer (entre 5300 et 700 av. J.-C.) offrent des informations exceptionnelles sur l’évolution culturelle d’une importante région européenne, grâce à la préservation remarquable des matériaux organiques, en particulier du bois. À partir de la deuxième moitié du XXe siècle, le perfectionnement des techniques de fouille subaquatiques et de la dendrochronologie permettront la construction d’un schéma chronologique précis pour l’Europe nord-alpine. Les recherches contribueront à des observations d’ordre écologique à l’échelle locale et régionale et à l’identification des rythmes de développement des villages. Sous l’égide de l'UNESCO, les années 2010 verront la constitution d’un inventaire vaste et uniforme des sites préhistoriques des lacs circumalpins, classés Patrimoine culturel mondial en juin 2011. De nombreux objets préhistoriques, romains et médiévaux ont été découverts entre 2003 et 2010, au Schnidejoch, un col des Alpes bernoises occidentales à 2756 m d’altitude, à la frontière entre les cantons de Berne et du Valais. Les hautes températures de l'été 2003 ont provoqué la fonte d'un petit champ de glace et mis en lumière les vestiges. Les recherches ont été programmées à la suite d’une série d’informations fournies par des randonneurs. Les objets en matière organique (bois, écorce de bouleau, cuir, fibres végétales) revêtent une très grande importance car ils ont permis l’obtention de plus d’une cinquantaine de datations radiocarbone ; elles indiquent le passage du col entre la moitié du Ve millénaire av. J.-C. et l’année 1000 de notre ère. En outre, les séries de datations suggèrent l’alternance de périodes de praticabilité et d’inaccessibilité du col. Le Schnidejoch est actuellement le plus ancien témoignage de la traversée des Alpes, reliant l‘Oberland bernois par les vallées de la Simme et du Rhône.

Ignacy Koschembahr-Łyskowski: profesor Uniwersytetu Fryburskiego (1895-1900)

Ignacy Koschembahr-Łyskowski: a professor at the University of Fribourg (1895-1900) Ignacy Koschembahr-Łyskowski (1864-1945) was a Polish legal scholar researching into Roman and Private laws; one of the drafters of Polish unified Private Law in the Interwar era. After having obtained his PhD in Berlin in 1888 and postdoctoral degree in Breslau in 1894, he moved to Fribourg (Switzerland), where he stayed 5 years (1895-1900) as a professor for Roman law. Koschembahr-Łyskowski wrote there his fundamental works on the methodology of Roman law (1898) and its usefulness for modernity, as well as about the codification of Swiss Private Law (1899), demonstrating the usefulness of the Roman law experience for modern legislation. An overview of his works shows a surprising topicality of his ideas. The survey concentrates on his teaching in Fribourg as well as his writings, and is based on many newly discovered documents from the local archives, that have never been published before.

Die laesio enormis und der dolus re ipsa heute: die Verschuldensfrage

The mediaeval interpreters of Roman law have worked out the dolus re ipsa-concept to explain the mysterious laesio enormis (C. 4.44.2 [a. 285]). The inequality in exchange has been supposed then to be a result of malicious undertaking, for which paradoxically, no one was personally liable (Ulp. 45 ad Sab. D. 45.1.36). In course of time, the incorporation of laesio enormis into the scheme of dolus turned into a presumption of a malicious act on the part of the enriched party, even though, the laesio enormis is free from subjective criteria. It is astonishing how little the dolus re ipsa is discussed, although the modern paradigm for correcting inequality in exchange is based on same assumptions. This ‘Wiederkehr der Rechtsfigur’ certainly deserves more attention.

European summer temperatures since Roman times

The spatial context is critical when assessing present-day climate anomalies, attributing them to potential forcings and making statements regarding their frequency and severity in a long-term perspective. Recent international initiatives have expanded the number of high-quality proxy-records and developed new statistical reconstruction methods. These advances allow more rigorous regional past temperature reconstructions and, in turn, the possibility of evaluating climate models on policy-relevant, spatio-temporal scales. Here we provide a new proxy-based, annually-resolved, spatial reconstruction of the European summer (June–August) temperature fields back to 755 CE based on Bayesian hierarchical modelling (BHM), together with estimates of the European mean temperature variation since 138 BCE based on BHM and composite-plus-scaling (CPS). Our reconstructions compare well with independent instrumental and proxy-based temperature estimates, but suggest a larger amplitude in summer temperature variability than previously reported. Both CPS and BHM reconstructions indicate that the mean 20th century European summer temperature was not significantly different from some earlier centuries, including the 1st, 2nd, 8th and 10th centuries CE. The 1st century (in BHM also the 10th century) may even have been slightly warmer than the 20th century, but the difference is not statistically significant. Comparing each 50 yr period with the 1951–2000 period reveals a similar pattern. Recent summers, however, have been unusually warm in the context of the last two millennia and there are no 30 yr periods in either reconstruction that exceed the mean average European summer temperature of the last 3 decades (1986–2015 CE). A comparison with an ensemble of climate model simulations suggests that the reconstructed European summer temperature variability over the period 850–2000 CE reflects changes in both internal variability and external forcing on multi-decadal time-scales. For pan-European temperatures we find slightly better agreement between the reconstruction and the model simulations with high-end estimates for total solar irradiance. Temperature differences between the medieval period, the recent period and the Little Ice Age are larger in the reconstructions than the simulations. This may indicate inflated variability of the reconstructions, a lack of sensitivity and processes to changes in external forcing on the simulated European climate and/or an underestimation of internal variability on centennial and longer time scales.