Hypogeum of Roaix
The Roaix Hypogeum (also called Roaix Grotto) is an artificial cave carved into the rock. It is located in the municipality of the same name, Roaix , about 40 kilometers north of Avignon and west of Vaison-la-Romaine in the Vaucluse department in France .
At the place called "les Crottes" ( Latin crotae , German caves ), a multi-layer burial horizon with several hundred skeletons was discovered. The upper one is the so-called warrior class. Many of the men, women and children buried in this shift had arrowheads stuck in their chests. It is believed that a collective killing took place here in the late Neolithic (Copper Age). The finds were dated to 2150–2090 BC. Dated. In the earlier layer there were flint daggers and arrowheads, simple pots and pearls made of copper , greenstone and turquoise . An artifact initially known as the “Perle de Roaix” was initially considered to be the oldest glass artifact in southern France, but was identified as a turquoise pearl in a recent study .
context
Several thousand graves are now known that date to the end of the Neolithic (Copper Age). The archaeologists were able to filter out violently killed people from the data. The first observations in this regard were made in 1870 and 1880 by Paul Cazalis de Fondouce in the hypogea of Fontvieille (Bouches-du-Rhone department) and the doctor Barthelemy Prunieres in the tree of Chaudes in Saint-Georges-de-Lévéjac (Lozere). They had found human bones with stone spikes in them.
At the end of the Neolithic there was an increase in violence. While there are hardly any examples of people demonstrably killed by violence in the European Early Neolithic (approx. 6000–4500 BC ), evidence is hardly more frequent in the Middle Neolithic (4500–3500 BC).
The area around Vaison is known as the Pays voconce , named after the Gallic tribe of the same name . The Gallic Vaison-la-Romaine was called Vasio Vocontiorum.
literature
- Gérard Sauzade: Les sépultures du Vaucluse du Néolithique à l'Âge du Bronze Paris: Ed. du Laboratoire de Paléontologie Humaine et de Préhistoire, Inst. de Paléontologie Humaine, 1983
Web links
- The hypogeum in the Base Mémoire des Ministère de la Culture (French)
- Presentation of Roaix (English)
Coordinates: 44 ° 15 '28 " N , 5 ° 1' 7.8" E