The 'Chátelard' at Bourg-Saint-Maurice (Savoie, France), a Neolithic and Protohistoric alpine site. Perched settlement and burial areas in the foothills of the Little St. Bernard pass

摘要

After the first excavations in 1972-76 and 1984-88, still for a large part unpublished, eleven new surveys were made between 2003 and 2007 on the Chátelard site, Bourg-Saint-Maurice (Savoie, France, at about 900 m altitude), in the foothills of the Little St. Bernard Alpine pass, as part of the European project Interreg III "Alpis Graia: Archaeology without borders". The finds and archives from the earlier campaigns were re-examined at the same time asfieldwork was resumed. This article deals with the preliminary results of this work and presents, for the first time, a global approach to the Chátelard site. The Chátelard site consists of four small plateaux, extending behind a series of glacial cross cliffs rising up a steep slope. This site is characteristic of a frequent type of settlement in the great, narrow Alpine valleys, in a geomorphological environment which rarely offers real commanding positions protected on all sides: perched on the hillside, dominating communication routes, protected by the steepness of the slopes and the proximity of deep torrential incisions. The first research conducted by the Aime Society of History and Archaeology revealed, on the downhill side of the lower plateau, two small funerary areas used for several periods over a very long time. Study of the excavation files allowed the position of the surveys to be fairly precisely determined and a plan to be presented of the dozen graves which were examined, sometimes rather summarily, during the 1970s and 1980s. Among these burials, partly undated and which present several kinds of architecture, dimensions and orientation, we note a probable cist grave cemetery similar to the Chamblandes graves, two tombs with mixed architecture radiocarbon dated to the Early Bronze Age, a secondary deposit consisting of cremation remains in an urn dated to the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, and at least one cist from the Early Middle Ages. Recent surveys enabled the extent of the archaeological site to be defined, and revealed exceptionally well-preserved protohistoric settlement levels in the upper locus. Analysis of the results and a critical review of the finds resulting from the earlier excavations enable us to propose a chronology of the settlement on the three main plateaux, from the Neolithic to the Early Middle Ages. Lithic and ceramic artefacts dating from the Neolithic have been found on the four plateaux, none of which seem prior to the Late Neolithic. The settlement intensified at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, revealed by thick occupation levels on the upper plateau. Further important occupations occurred during the first Iron Age, the Roman period and the Early Middle Ages, but the remains are much more poorly preserved. The settlement and use of the burial areas present chronological gaps, which cannot be explained by taphonomic elements alone or by a regional decline in occupation. The Chátelard plateaux seem to have been less inhabited, or even abandoned, during the Middle Bronze Age, the Late Bronze Age 3 and the Late Iron Age. The periodization observed can be compared with data collected by surveys on many hill sites on both sides of the Little Saint-Bernard pass, near the Alpine crossing routes. The Chátelard sequence is one of the longest and most complete of all the sites on both sides of the pass. In our present state of knowledge, the occupation of hill sites seems to have been sooner on the French side, as early as the Neolithic, and at an altitude generally lower than 1000 metres.