dAf 84
DEDET Bernard
Tombes et pratiques funéraires protohistoriques des Grands Causses du Gévaudan
(Aveyron, Gard, Lozère)
This richly illustrated monograph, the result of exhaustive documentary research, offers a detailed and standardised critical inventory of Late Bronze Age to fifth century BC funerary assemblages discovered in the Grands Causses region of
Abstract
Abstract
Since the middle of the nineteenth century, 240 late Bronze and early Iron Age burials have been discovered in the high limestone plateaux located in the southern Massif Central, the Grands Causses du Gévaudan region and the neighbouring areas of Sauveterre, Bondons, Méjan, Noir and their surroundings. Although the tombs span a period from the Late Bronze Age to the fifth century BC, most of the datable material comes from the early Iron Age graves.
The first section of the book begins with a presentation of the region, including a history of excavations in the area and the evolution of related scientific concepts. This is followed by a discussion of the tombs themselves, consisting of an illustrated, critically annotated data-base containing information gathered up to the beginning of 1998. Geographic, topographic, archaeological, osteological and anthropological information is presented under standardised headings. This part of the monograph is organised into four chapters, each corresponding to a causse, or plateau, and its surrounding area: Sauveterre (147 sites), Bondons (13 sites), Méjan (56 sites) and Noir (24 sites). Analysing these previously unpublished documents, in particular the human bone material found in forty-seven of the tombs, has given researchers the opportunity to study a population of sixty-seven individuals.
The second part of the publication comprises five chapters which provide a synthesis of funerary practices in use in the region during the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age periods. Variations in time and space are systematically taken into account, whilst comparisons with surrounding geographical areas enable the author to assess specifically regional practices.
Chapter 5 deals with tombs from a variety of different locations. In addition to reused older monuments (megalithic chambers and tumuli) or, less frequently, natural cavities, pits or enclosure ditches, most of the tombs are stone or stone and earth tumuli. It is these “new” tumuli which deserve attention in light of their preferential location, materials, tomb area and internal organisation, dimensions, covering and grave-marking methods.
Evidence for the dead, presented in Chapter 6, includes those remains still available for study (67 individuals) and those for which only an archaeological description survives (119 individuals). Discussion revolves around the number of bodies per tomb, distribution according to age at death (an unusually low number of early deaths) and anthropological distribution of the sexes (evenly balanced between males and females). The chapter also considers different ways corpses were dealt with, namely burned in situ or on a ustrinum or unburned, either as a primary deposit or as a secondary deposit after excarnation. Such issues as the manipulation of bones and the absence of bone remains in certain monuments resembling tombs are also taken up in this chapter. For each method the way in which the human remains were deposited is examined : quantification of cremated bone, presence or absence of an ossuary, position and orientation of unburned corpses, organisation of the grave area.
Chapter 7 presents a study of grave goods and funerary offerings. The finds are classified by category and type and analysed with reference to associated objects and differential distribution in time and space. The chapter includes an analysis and interpretation of animal remains by A. Gardeisen.
Indicators of social structure within the funerary context are considered in Chapter 8, which begins with a synthesis of the preceding chapters and goes on to explore further fields of study such as how individuals were “selected” to be buried in these tombs, differences in grave goods according to the deceased’s gender and the emergence of such distinctive figures as mature females with torcs, females wearing abundant or precious ornaments and males with weapons and, very often, a metal bowl. Individuals are clearly organised into a hierarchy composed of several strata based in part on purely natural criteria, such as age and gender, but most likely on their position in society as well.
Chapter 9 deals with the possible significance of certain repetitive and non-repetitive features and raises questions regarding the more spiritual concerns reflected in these protohistoric burial groups, with specific reference to death and the after-life.
