Résumé
Morphometric analyses applied on anatomical features of modern olive charcoal show that "growth ring width" and "number of vessels per group" are two significant criteria of discrimination between the wild and cultivated trees. These same characters measured in olive charcoal from the Cova de l'Esperit archaeological site (Salses, Roussillon) and tested by multivariate analysis, show the existence of cultivated specimens along the archaeological sequence, increasingly frequent in the Bronze Age. The domestication process of the olive tree might have occurred early in western Mediterranean areas,long before the introduction of cultivated varieties by classical civilizations.