Marnegrotten
The Marnegrottos ( French Les hypogées en vallée de la Marne ) were cut into the chalk slopes on the upper reaches of the Marne in France by the supporters of the Neolithic Seine-Oise-Marne culture (SOM) . In Neolithic Europe you can find grottoes on the Marne, at the exit of the Rhone Valley, in the Drôme, in the Gard and in the Vaucluse, with individual cases in Provence, but also in central Italy and especially in Sardinia, Sicily, Malta and the Balearic Islands.
There are around 170 grottoes on the Marne, grouped in 20 necropolises, which have been excavated between Sézanne and Reims since 1806. Many were "unscientific" excavated as early as the 19th century, especially by Baron Joseph de Baye (1853–1931), who excavated no fewer than 96. The finds were given to museums, but the hundreds of pieces can usually not be assigned to the grottoes (only 14 finds are well documented). Between 1892 and 1942, 42 more grottos were discovered in the south-west of the Marne department , but they were also excavated by local scholars rather than archaeologists using modern scientific methods. Only eight new grottos were discovered after World War II . The first scientific excavation was carried out in Mesnil-sur-Oger Les Mournouards 3 in 1958 by André Leroi-Gourhan. Four excavations were carried out in 1967 and one in 1988. In La Crayère in Vert-la-Gravelle, Rémi Martineau has been investigating three of the grottoes since 2013 that had already been explored by Baron de Baye.
The cave center is around the Marais de Saint-Gond marshes , where there are 123 in 15 necropolises such as Coizards Le Razet , with 37 caves. The other major necropolises are:
- Coligny: Le Mont-Aimé
- Congy: Les Cornabaux
- Courjeonnet: Les Houyottes , Les Vignes Basses and Les Vignes Jaunes
- Oyes: La Crayère / Le Gros Chêne , Au-dessus du Moulin and La Butte du Moulin
- Vert-la-Gravelle: The Crayère
- Villevenard: Pierre Michelot , Les Ronces , Les Vignes Basses , Le Moulin Brûlé , Pente du Moulin and La Craïère .
- Marnegrotten
Saran Grotto 1
Saran Grotto 4
Many of the rock necropolises , especially in the area around Épernay , are decorated with a stylized female figure that is interpreted as the goddess of the dead (or Déesse Mère ). The facilities have short corridors that lead into a (mostly oval) vestibule and, over a raised threshold, into one or two, almost square, trapezoidal chambers with lengths of up to four meters and up to 1.7 m in height. At the side of the entrance to the main chamber there are representations on the walls that are reminiscent of the statue menhirs of the Midi , the shape of which was carved into the rock with the stele rounded at the top . The representation is reduced to the breasts, the owl face, and a multi-row or simple necklace with a yellow-brown pearl in the center. In Courjeonnet one is geschäftete double ax shown. The deity reduced to the breasts and the necklace can also be found on the walls of the Allée couvertes in the Seine area .
The grottoes belong to the custom of collective burials, which developed around the Paris Basin in the Middle Neolithic (from 3500 BC). The finds are fairly close to the cultures of Eastern France and Switzerland ( Horgen culture ). The most common collective burials, however, occur in deep galleries that could accommodate from a few dozen to several hundred people. Numerous skeletons were also found in the Marnegrotten. Grottoes with worn thresholds, which must have been used for a long time, are filled with skeletal layers that extend to the entrance.
The equipment industry and the valuable jewelry from the necropolis in the south of France are contrasted by the poor grave goods from the Marnegrotten. There are stone axes and daggers, cross-edged arrowheads , pearls made of bone, horn, conch shells and stone, and raw pot-shaped clay vessels. The simple, coarse ceramic is related to that of the Horgen culture .
literature
- M. Roland: Découverte d'une Grotte neolithique à Courjeonnet, près Villevenard (Marne). In: Bulletin de la Société préhistorique de France. Vol. 8, No. 11, 1911, ISSN 0037-9514 , pp. 669-676, doi : 10.3406 / ex . 1911.6335 .
- Pierre-Marcel Favret, A. Loppin: Grotte sépulcrale neolithique d'Avize (Marne). In: Gallia . Vol. 1, No. 2, 1943, ISSN 0016-4119 , pp. 19-26, doi : 10.3406 / galia.1943.1966 .
- Léon Coutier, André Brisson: Fouille d'une grotte-sépulture au Mesnil-sur-Oger (Marne). In: Bulletin de la Société préhistorique de France. Vol. 56, No. 11/12, 1959, pp. 709-714, doi : 10.3406 / ex . 1959.3621 .