Fleury-sur-Orne necropolis

Plan of the necropolis

Tomb of the necropolis

The approximately 20 hectare necropolis of Fleury-sur-Orne is a Neolithic necropolis of the Passy type with 12 to 350 m long tumuli of the Cerny culture , in Fleury-sur-Orne , south of Caen in Normandy in France .

Discovery and Finding

The complex excavated by Cyrille Billard and Antoine Chancerel from 1985 to 1995 is one of seven Passy-type necropolises that have been found around Caen. The partially petrified hills were still visible in the landscape until the Second World War , when the Allied landing in June 1944 ( Operation Overlord ) greatly changed the landscape around Fleury-sur-Orne. The graves were later found again by aerial archeology and made the subject of an excavation. Monumental burial mounds were uncovered that date back to around 4500 BC. And make the site unique in France. The necropolis was restored after the excavation and is to become part of a museum village in Fleury-sur-Orne.

Of the 20 monuments identified, some were in relatively good condition and traces of others were found in their neighborhood. The necropolis, which was probably in use for more than four centuries, consists of originally about 2.0 m high, narrow burial mounds made of earth and wood, which are sometimes surrounded by a palisade and up to 15.0 m wide trenches. Below them are buried graves, some of which are well preserved.

interpretation

Pablo Arias interprets the structures as a connection between the longhouses of the LBK tradition and the megaliths of the French Atlantic coast, followed by Richard Bradley and a team led by Alasdair Whittle . This takes up the older Vere Gordon Childes derivation of the Kujawian long beds from the trapezoidal houses of the Brześć Kujawski group.

literature

Caroline Riche, Aminte Thomann, Elisabeth Ravon, Ugo Lemoigne: Les sépultures du Néolithique moyen I et du moyen II de Porte-Joie (Eure): groupes funéraires isolés ou nécropoles associées à l'habitat? Données préliminaires. In: Revue archéologique de l'Ouest. Volume 31, 2014, pp. 25-36, doi : 10.4000 / rao.2398 .
Seweryn Rzepecki : The roots of megalitism in the TRB culture. Instytut Archeologii Uniwersytetu Łódźkiego et al., Łodz 2011, ISBN 978-83-933586-1-8 (also dissertation).

Individual evidence

^ Pablo Arias : The Origins of the Neolithic Along the Atlantic Coast of Continental Europe: A Survey. In: Journal of World Prehistory. Volume 13, Number 4, 1999, pp. 403-464, here p. 427, JSTOR 25801150 .
^ Richard Bradley: Orientations and origins: a symbolic dimension to the long house in Neolithic Europe. In: Antiquity. Volume 75, number 287, 2001, pp. 50-56, doi : 10.1017 / S0003598X00052704 .
↑ Alasdair Whittle, Alistair Barclay, Alex Bayliss, Lesley McFadyen, Rick Schulting, Michael Wysocki: Building for the Dead: Events, Processes and Changing Worldviews from the Thirty-eighth to the Thirty-fourth Centuries cal. Bc in Southern Britain. In: Alex Bayliss, Alasdair Whittle (Eds.): Histories of the Dead. Building Chronologies for five southern British Long Barrows (= Cambridge Archaeological Journal. Volume 17, Supplement S1). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, pp. 123-147, here p. 140 doi : 10.1017 / S0959774307000200 .
^ Vere G. Childe : The Origin of Neolithic Culture in Northern Europe. In: Antiquity. Volume 23, number 91, 1949, pp. 129-135, doi : 10.1017 / S0003598X00020184 .

Web links

Commons : Necropolis of Fleury-sur-Orne - Collection of images, videos and audio files

49.152575 -0.368386Coordinates: 49 ° 9 '9.3 " N , 0 ° 22' 6.2" W.

[1] Pablo Arias : The Origins of the Neolithic Along the Atlantic Coast of Continental Europe: A Survey. In: Journal of World Prehistory. Volume 13, Number 4, 1999, pp. 403-464, here p. 427, JSTOR 25801150 .

[2] Richard Bradley: Orientations and origins: a symbolic dimension to the long house in Neolithic Europe. In: Antiquity. Volume 75, number 287, 2001, pp. 50-56, doi : 10.1017 / S0003598X00052704 .

[3] Alasdair Whittle, Alistair Barclay, Alex Bayliss, Lesley McFadyen, Rick Schulting, Michael Wysocki: Building for the Dead: Events, Processes and Changing Worldviews from the Thirty-eighth to the Thirty-fourth Centuries cal. Bc in Southern Britain. In: Alex Bayliss, Alasdair Whittle (Eds.): Histories of the Dead. Building Chronologies for five southern British Long Barrows (= Cambridge Archaeological Journal. Volume 17, Supplement S1). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, pp. 123-147, here p. 140 doi : 10.1017 / S0959774307000200 .

[4] Vere G. Childe : The Origin of Neolithic Culture in Northern Europe. In: Antiquity. Volume 23, number 91, 1949, pp. 129-135, doi : 10.1017 / S0003598X00020184 .