Roger Grosjean

Roger Grosjean

Roger Grosjean (born July 25, 1920 in Chalon-sur-Saône , † June 7, 1975 in Ajaccio ) was a French archaeologist and head of the Center de préhistoire corse . Grosjean was the first to deal intensively with the prehistory and early history of Corsica .

Roger Grosjean was born in Chalon-sur-Saône and spent his youth in northern France , where he moved several times according to the transfers of his father, a judge. In 1939 he joined the French Air Force and trained as a fighter pilot. In November 1942 he was demobilized.

In the spring of 1943 he fled to England via Spain and Portugal to join de Gaulle's forces. Under the code name FIDO, he worked on the Double Cross System, a deception maneuver with the aim of providing the Germans with false information about the landing sites in France. In addition to this activity, Grosjean was a member of the Free French Air Force.

He left the Air Force in late 1946 and began taking archeology courses at the Sorbonne in Paris . He also accompanied the famous French archaeologist L'Abbé Breuil on excavations. He then joined the CNRS and was sent to Corsica at his request.

From 1954 the megalithic complex of Filitosa was excavated under his leadership . At Filitosa and in other parts of Corsica one can find menhirs in the form of armed warriors holding swords, many of them destroyed. According to Grosjean, the warriors were conquerors from the 2nd millennium BC. BC, which overran the megalithic culture and conquered the megalithic systems. They converted the megaliths into forts and defense towers, one of the first to be found at Torre . Grosjean defined the Torre culture after the towers (tower is called Torre in Italian). He identified the conquerors as members of the so-called sea ​​peoples , which from inscriptions from the time of Ramses III. are known. The shardana , hence the name shardan theory , also belonged to these sea peoples . But today there are also alternative explanations of the warriors.

The time before the Torre culture was determined by Neolithic megalithic cultures, with the last phase existing parallel to the Torre culture. Grosjean distinguishes three megalithic phases in Corsica:

• Megalithic I (3200-2500 BC)
• Megalithic II (2500–1600 BC)
• Megalithic III (1600–1000 BC)

Both the Torre culture and the Neolithic cultures ended in 1000 BC. A period of no significant discoveries follows.

An illustrated biography of Roger Grosjean was published in 2011 by his son, Professor François Grosjean (see footnotes).

Fonts (selection)

• La Corse avant l'histoire. Monuments et art de la civilisaton mégalithique insulaire du début du IIIe à la fin du IIe millénaire avant notre ère. Klincksieck, Paris 1966, (Second edition: with Fulgenzio-Leonardo: La Corse avant l'histoire. Monuments et art de la civilization mégalithique insulaire du début du IIIe à la fin du IIe millénaire avant notre ère. Nouvelle édition mise à jour. Klincksieck , Paris 1981, ISBN 2-252-02346-5 ).
• Filitosa. Haut lieu de la Corse préhistorique. Notice archéologique (= Promenades archéologiques. 1). 10e édition. Center de préhistoire corse, Sartène 1975, ISBN 2-900472-06-1 (German: Filitosa. Stronghold of prehistoric Corsica. Archaeological survey . Translated by Lotte Komma. Center de préhistoire corse, Sartène 1978, ISBN 2-900472-03-2 ).
• Torre et Torréens. Âge du bronze de l'île de Corse. Notice archéologique (= Promenades archéologiques. 3). Center de préhistoire corse, Sartène 1975, ISBN 2-900472-02-4 .

proof

• Gérard Bailloud: Necrology: Roger Grosjean (1920-1975). In: Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française. Vol. 72, No. 6, 1975, pp. 161-162, ( online at Persée ).
• François Grosjean: Roger Grosjean. Itinéraires d'un archéologue. Editions Alain Piazzola, Ajaccio 2011, ISBN 978-2-915410-95-2 .
• Wolfgang Kathe: Corsica. Reise-Know-How Verlag Rump, Bielefeld 2004, ISBN 3-8317-1233-6 .
• Wolfgang Korn : Megalithic Cultures. Enigmatic monuments of the Stone Age. Konrad Theiss, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-8062-1553-7 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Roger Grosjean in the catalog of the German National Library