dAf 72
LAPORTE Luc
L'estuaire de la Charente de la Protohistoire au Moyen Âge
The studies compiled here all pertain to the Same area, located between the Charente river Valley and the Saintonge marshlands, a Perpetually shifting and inhospitable setting that constitutes a privileged field of study for grasping the numerous and complex interactions between the human populations and their natural environment. A seaside site and a plains site were excavated at the time of a motorway construction project (the A837 between Saintes and Rochefort), and the vestiges found illustrate the diversity of settlement and uses of these lands. In La Challonnière a saltworks (4th-3rd century BC) Was uncovered and its activities retraced in detail, as well as an early Middle Ages settlement and its ceramic artefacts typical of Saintonge workshops. In Mortantambe a small rural homestead (2nd-1st century BC) was examined along with the evidence of its economy(farming, hunting. fishing, metal working...), and structures and graves attesting occupation from the 8th to the 9th century. In parallel, the progression of the filling-in of the estuary was retraced by means of multidisciplinary analysis of deep sondages.
These studies make a fundamental contribution to the history of the settlement and the countryside in the Rochefort hinterland.
Abstract
Abstract
Introduction
L. LAPORTE
The studies compiled here all pertain to the same area, located between the Charente river valley and the Rochefort marsh, near the estuary of the Charente. A perpetually shifting and inhospitable setting, but also an ecological zone of great richness and diversity, the Charente estuary and the Saintonge seaside wetlands constitute a privileged field of study for grasping the numerous and complex interactions between the human populations and their natural environment. The work focuses on two sites, differently situated in the landscape and occupied principally during the second Iron Age and the medieval period. These studies illustrate the diversity of the ways in which these lands were used. These two archaeological digs were carried out under a single operation of preventive archaeological intervention prior to a motorway construction project (the A 837 motorway linking Saintes and Rochefort).
1. The palaeographic development of the Charente estuary during the Holocene
P. CARBONEL, H. DARTEVELLE, J. EVIN, Y. GRUET, L. LAPORTE, L. MARAMBAT,
J.-P. TASTET, C. VELLA, O. WEBER
Multi-disciplinary study of four deep sondages provides information on the progressive filling-in of the Charente valley and of its most direct tributaries, in the vicinity of the present-day estuary. Three of these sondages were sunk in the Rochefort wetlands, and the fourth in the Boutonne river valley, close to its confluence with the Charente. The major stages of the filling-in are outlined in three phases found in all of the sondages, with a few variations due to their respective positions. First is found a bay largely open to marine dynamics under the influence of the rapid rise in the level of the sea at the beginning of the Holocene. During the Atlantic period low-lying lands began to be filled in by fluvial deposits subject to tides. During the sub-Atlantic period a swampy marsh took hold. It would thus seem that the most direct marine influences were mitigated much earlier than it has generally been thought. For the periods which interest us here, it is hardly conceivable that this part of the Rochefort marsh could have been a vast ocean-filled gulf in the course of the Iron Age or at the beginning of the Gallo- Roman epoch.
2. An example of coastal implantation (protohistory - Middle Ages) : the La Challonnière site in Tonnay-Charente
H. DARTEVELLE, avec la collaboration d’A. BOCQUET, C. VELLA et la participation de R. BOUR, P. CARBONEL, D. DUFOURNIER, L. FAVRE, Y. GRUET, J.-L. HILLAIRET, L. MARAMBAT, B. POISBLAUD, I. RODET-BELARDI
Bordering the coastal marsh, the La Challonnière site has yielded many archaeological vestiges from the Neolithic up to the medieval period. Some site indicators point to occupation as early as the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age. In the 4th or 3rd century BC salt harvesters settled in this sheltered cove, near the salt lagoons along the estuary silt beds and at the outlet of a small continental freshet. The remains of this craft activity are visible primarily in the extensive rubbish deposit areas, where many shards of fired clay are mixed with the ash of hearths. Pits, postholes and what is perhaps the site of an oven have also been identified. A significant fraction of the technological apparatus has been archeologically reconstituted, as well as the operational sequences in which these fixtures were involved. The circular cupule-tipped tamping tools (pilettes), the quadrangular pillars and the cylindrical vases are broadly representative of the Saintonge features. Although more than a hundred sites of this kind have long been recorded along the rim of the Rochefort marsh, this is the first instance of extensive excavation in the workshop of a Saintonge salt harvester.
A little later, various improvements underscore humankind's slow reconquest of this marine setting, marked notably by the presence of plot ditches dating from before the 11th-12th centuries. It was at this time that a small settlement grew up in La Challonnière, materialised by spreading of materials, a few detritus pits and postholes, unfortunately without any apparent pattern of organisation. The rich ceramic furnishings dating from this period have been successfully compared, both from a technological and typological point of view, with the production from the Saintonge workshops located in the Matha plains; well upstream in the Charente valley.
3. An example of settlement in the Charente plains (late Iron Age and Middle Ages): the Mortantambe site in Cabariot
A. TOLEDO I MUR, H. PETITOT avec la ccollaboration D’I. BERTRAND, A. BOCQUET, D. CODINA I REINA, N. DIEUDONNÉ-GLAD, A. GARDEISEN, Y. GRUET, J.-L. HILLAIRET, K. JACQUOT, N. JUAN-MUNS I PLANS, K. LUNDSTROM-BAUDAIS, D. MARGUERIE, P. MILLE
Spotted by aerial photography, the rural settlement of Mortantambe was subjected to extensive mechanical scraping over 3.5 ha. No archaeological soil escaped erosion, but the traces of three enclosures were thus outlined, totalling over 500 linear metres of protohistoric ditches. The abundant furnishings found in the ditches date the occupation of the site to the second Iron Age, between 150/120 BC and 30 BC. Inside each enclosure the great many hollowed-out structures suggest the presence of wooden constructions, with a reserved area a few metres wide running along the ditch. The attested economic activities are those of a small rural farm: raising livestock, agriculture, viticulture (7), as well as a bit of hunting, fishing and gathering. The livestock herd seems to have been aimed primarily towards producing beef, perhaps in response to the needs of a market economy whose ramifications were reaching farther and farther into the rural world. The presence of soap-type ceramics and a few fragments of amphorae could constitute further evidence for this. Some remains also indicate crafts activity tied to iron working. In contrast there are no vestiges attesting the existence of any ties whatsoever with the coastal salt harvesters, although they were active during this period.
Various hollowed-out structures and 23 graves date from the medieval period (Bth-10thcenturies). They attest the existence at this site of a small intervening settlement that probably extended well beyond the footprint of the road construction project, the limits of the area covered in this study. ln the Charente river country this type of habitat seems to have disappeared, according to the textual evidence, in the 11thand 12th centuries. At the same time Small towns grew up around the newly built churches, drawing together the formerly dispersed rural population, persisting in some instances even up to our own day.
Conclusion
L. LAPORTE
Altogether this work casts a spotlight, much too localised and brief of course, on the history of human settlement and the evolution of the countryside in this small section of the Rochefort hinterland, mainly over the last two millennia. The juxtaposition of the results obtained in these different studies, carried out with the constraints and advantages inherent to any preventive archaeology project, gives us a fresh perception of these agricultural and crafts-based communities at the end of the Iron Age along the Saintonge coast.
Annex : Further information pertaining to the study of palaeo-environments : detailed data
J.-P. TASTET, L. LAPORTE – P. CARBONEL, H. DARTEVELLE, J. EVIN, Y. GRUET, L. MARAMBAT, C. VELLA, O. WEBER
After a short methodological introduction, this chapter presents a detailed analysis of the palaeoenvironmental data collected during the work on each of the four columns studied. The results of sediment analysis, malacological and palynological analysis, examination of ostracoda and radiocarbon dating are given for the four columns. The results obtained in each of these disciplines are then compiled in a summary note covering each sondage separately.
Keywords
Iron Age, ceramics, economy, enclosure, settlement, Atlantic coast, sea level, palaeoenvironment, salt, burial site.
