dAf 104
JAHIER Ivan (dir.)
L'enceinte des premier et second âges du Fer de La Fosse Touzé
(Courseulles-sur Mer, Calvados
Entre résidence aristocratique et place de collecte monumentale
The publication, more than ten years ago, of a rural settlement occupied from the 6th century BC to the 3rd century AD, the farm of The Boisanne in Plouër-sur-Rance, in the Côtes d’Armor Department (Daf 58), permitted Yves Menez to address the notion of indigenous farms. Today, Ivan Jahier revises this question based on the Protohistoric site of Courseulles-sur-Mer, in this case located inland from the Normandy coast. This site possesses all the classic elements of an indigenous farm : houses, fences, outbuildings, storage facilities, an agricultural and pasture area, domestic remains, traces of craft activities, and even a few graves, but distributed inside and around an enclosure wall three to four times larger than most such walls of the Iron Age of this region. What was the purpose of this grouping of a number of storage facilities within an enclosure wall whose function was clearly more ostentatious than defensive and which included no more than two or three houses? Ivan Jahier attempts to answer this question through a solid analytical approach. The conclu-sions he draws and interpretations he proposes shed new light on the organization of society during the 5th century BC and enable the formu-ation of new hypotheses concerning the origins of the cultural transition of the beginning of the second Iron Age in Normandy.
Abstract
Abstract
1 - The context
If we consider the geographic position of the Basse-Normandie region and in particular that of the Plaine de Caen, we see that during the Iron Age it occupied an intermediary position between two cultural entities of Northern Gaul that are often opposed by archaeological data: the Armorican domain to the west and the Paris Basin to the east. In 1996, the site of La Fosse Touzé, located at the northern extremity of this long sedimentary corridor, 1,500 m from the coast, was integrated into a construction project affecting 12 hectares and planned by the Grand Caen commune group at Courseulles-sur-Mer. The site, which was discovered a few years before during an aerial survey, was then part of a vast enclosure with only three sides. Within this curious “fortification wall”, the diagnostic evaluation of the sector concerned by the project, realized at the time by Afan, revealed the buried boundary stones of an enclosed habitat of 1 hectare attributable to the end of the First and beginning of the Second Iron Age. The fourth side, to the west, was in fact closed by a 2 to 3 m thick wall with facing. This is one of the first times that a habitat from this period has been identified in Basse-Normandie. It thus presented an opportunity to study its principle structural components, as well as to determine the main characteristics of its material culture. A nearly complete excavation of the ensemble was conducted by Afan during the spring of 1997 in the context of an urgent salvage operation. The traces of several other occupations were revealed, including one during the Final Neolithic, illustrated by a small assemblage of knapped flint in a colluvial context. A Middle Bronze Age funerary ensemble was also found, apparently accompanied by cremation rituals, but also including an unknown type of monument with wooden walls. The periods posterior to the Iron Age yielded only a few traces of occasional occupations, one from the Gallo-Roman period, illustrated by a cremation and a pit, the other from the Middle Ages, represented by just a few pottery fragments.
2 - The Iron Age habitat
The first part of this work describes the analysis of the enclosure structures. Their different types—trenches, palisades and walls—and their evolution reveal four principal phases of construction and in addition to a possible hierarchy between them, a planned program of construction from the start. The principal entrance, a monumental door, seems to have played a major role. It was moreover preceded by an esplanade and extended by a small courtyard. It evolved through at least four stages—portico, fortified door and porch—before being encased in the wall. Inside the walled area, there are numerous cavities, including several hundreds of postholes. Meanwhile, their analysis, through which around fifty edifices were identified, distinguished only two early habitations, light and canted, which show similarities with the plans of structures in the Paris Basin, and two more perennial circular habitations that are more closely related to “Atlantic” traditions. Most of the constructions seem to correspond to granaries aligned along the trenches. The perennial nature of the locations and the structures also shows a generally concentric organization around a central court that is accessed by two divergent roads from the entrance. We also find a few storage pits whose number, volume and location on the site suggest that they were associated with individual households. Nearby, there are a few more enigmatic structures on posts, which could be weaving looms, drying sheds or tanning frames. Despite these numerous constructions, the search for related habitation units that would have supported this enterprise was unsuccessful. All of the structures identified outside the enclosure wall appear to have been technical complements to this strange ensemble and only add to the long list of its installations. There is a road to the west, a metallurgical annex to the south-west, an enclosed and modified agro-pastoral zone to the south, a stone quarry and diverse shelters or annexes on posts located near footbridges crossing the trenches. Contrary to all expectations, the funerary theme cannot be excluded either since a half a dozen burials still in place, mostly graves, as well as an equal number of dispersed human bones, reveal a poorly known aspect of funerary practices during this period. Paradoxically, this ensemble includes one of the most richly adorned graves known in the region (sep. 2010: 16 bronze, iron and lead rings).
3 - The artefacts
The artefacts, which were found in diverse structures as well as in patches in the ground, are clearly associated with habitats. The analysis of 2,200 faunal remains gives a good idea of the composition of the livestock and allows several comparisons to be made with the remains identified at other sites of this period in western and northern France. The 10,500 pottery fragments present as many affinities with the Armorican domain as with that of the Paris Basin. They thus constitute an original representation of the association of the two facies with closed ensembles and thus indicate several relationships between “western” and “eastern” collections. Despite the chronological divergences, several other links can be made with southern Great Britain. This ensemble, on which the chronology of the site is based, can be attributed the 5th and 4th centuries BCE.
A petrographic analysis of the clays responds to the Cornelian question of the choice between stylistic influence and exchange of finished products. The metallurgical remains indicate the production of copper objects integrating the recycling of ancient objects. The ensemble is enriched by a modest instrumentum including tools and accessories related to milling, salt processing (consumption), spinning, weaving and perhaps fishing and butchery.
4 - Synthesis
