Returning to the question asked fifty years ago by Leroi-Gourhan about the conditions for borrowing or rejecting an element of exogenous technical know-how, the author proposes an original and meticulate ethnoarchaeological method of analysis for borrowing phenomena.

Showing the limits of morphological and stylistic approaches and underlining the necessity to consider technical borrowings at all stages of the "chaîne opératoire", she presents the results of a broad study untertaken among potters of theSenegal River Valley.
The borrowing process is analysed as a complex interaction between different components depending at times on the technical task (motor discontinuity, quality of the finished product, efficiency of the process, etc.), at times on environmental constraints, and at other times on the subject's own technical , functional, social or economic goals. Borrowing conditions are defined by a combination of contextual parameters (scale of production, mode of distribution, artisans status, etc.). From these ethnographic experiments and surveys, the author draws interpretation rules for technical borrowings in terms of cross-community contacts.

These conclusions boldly confront many currents ideas about borrowing phenomena.

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