Peu Richard culture

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Peu Richard culture
Age : End Neolithic
Absolutely : 3300 to 2900 BC Chr.

expansion
Western France
Leitforms

Enclosures, ceramics

The Peu-Richard culture , French Culture de Peu-Richard , sometimes just called Thénacien , is a cultural stage of the end Neolithic ( Néolithique récent II ) in central western France . It established itself from 3300 BC. In the Saintonge .

etymology

Pottery of the Peu Richard culture in the Musée archéologique de Pons

The name of the culture is derived from the hamlet of Peu-Richard , which belongs to the municipality of Thénac in the Charente-Maritime department ( Nouvelle-Aquitaine region ).

history

The Peu-Richard site and thus the Peu-Richard culture was first scientifically described by Eugène Eschasserieux in 1884.

Geographical distribution

Starting from its home area in the Saintonge and the lower and middle reaches of the Charente , the Peu Richard culture extended north to the Bocage vendéen near La Roche-sur-Yon , south to the Médoc north of Bordeaux and to the east to Cognac in the western Charente department . To the southeast, the culture reached the middle reaches of the Dronne and Isle in the Dordogne department .

Spatially neighboring (and temporally roughly parallel) cultural groups were the Kérugou group in Brittany , the Taizé group in the Deux-Sèvres department , the Vienne-Charente group (3650 to 2450 BC) in the Vienne department and in the Haute-Vienne department and the Isle-Dordogne group in Périgord . South of the Lot there was the Crosien (3650 to 2950 BC) and in the foothills of the Pyrenees in the vicinity of Toulouse the Véraza culture (3800 to 1800 BC - age data of the cultures according to Fouéré and Dias-Meirinho).

Type locality

The type locality Peu-Richard (actually Puy Richard ) near Thénac, discovered towards the end of the 19th century, was located on a slight hill. The facility, which was several tens of hectares in size, was surrounded by three trench systems with a diameter of more than 150 meters. The outer trench was 7 meters wide, 3.50 meters deep and 900 meters long. The inner trench was 9 to 10 meters wide and 2.3 meters deep. The trenches were interrupted by 5 access roads secured by stone towers. Wooden palisades stood on the inside of the trenches . Inside the facility there were several huts and a granary. It is assumed that the facility, which accommodates around 400 residents, was built to protect cattle and domestic animals in addition to purely defensive purposes. Peu-Richard delivered rich finds of stone and bone tools as well as a wide variety of ceramics - including 417 stone axes and smaller hatchets, but also 230 remains of grain hand mills.

Essentials

Pottery of the Peu Richard culture with characteristic eye-shaped depressions

Stone tools

The stone tools of the Peu Richard culture do not show any major innovations compared to the Middle Neolithic and the previous Matignons culture . In addition to the usual scrapers , drills , burins, etc., various knives and very small burins (French micro-denticulés ) on a blade basis appear. Cutting tools served as armament, the majority of which obviously had a trapezoidal cross-section. The sharp arrowheads were either of the Sublaines type , which can be traced starting from the Angoumois to the south of the Paris basin and the Armorican massif , or they had bifacial retouching - with occurrences south of the Charente Valley.

The teeing techniques experienced slight changes. While in the continental facies only hard chipping devices were still used, soft chipping devices were also used in blade manufacture in the Atlantic facies. The mostly quite short blades originated mostly from unipolar cores and only rarely also from bipolar cores with opposing cutting planes. Reductions that occurred centripetally or originated from multipolar nuclei remained dominant. The Kombewa technology was also used more and more .

Ceramics

The Peu-Richard culture is characterized by a very versatile pottery that goes back to the Matignons culture and was possibly also influenced by the Seine-Oise-Marne culture . In the further course of development, there was also overlap with the Moulin-de-Vent culture , which was located further south-east on the lower reaches of the Dordogne and the lower reaches of the Garonne (note: the Moulin-de-Vent culture is described by newer authors no longer viewed as an independent culture, but only viewed as a sub-facies of the continental Peu Richard culture).

The pottery consisted primarily of storage vases up to one meter high with round bases and vases of the so-called flower pot type . Up to three horizontal incisions above the maximum bulge, overlapping fluting and garlands, but also wart-like protrusions (on the bulges) served as decorations. Often motifs appear in zigzag, ray or star shape. The openings of some vessels are accompanied below their indentation by paired eye-like depressions - which gives them an anthropomorphic character . This characteristic is possibly derived from the final stage of the Spanish Almería culture .

Settlement sites

The settlements of the Peu Richard culture were grouped around fortified places ( mine works ) with a diameter of more than 150 meters. These were mostly situated on hills and were surrounded by trenches 5 meters wide and 2 meters deep. Examples of this can be found in addition to the type locality in the communities of Barzan , Semussac , L'Éguille and Cozes . The prehistoric enclosure of Champ-Durand in the Vendée department is particularly impressive .

Burial places

The deceased were reused in dolmens of the megalithic buried or in the trenches of the mine works.

Age

The first forerunners of the Peu Richard culture developed as early as 3600 BC. However, the culture experienced its main distribution between 3300 and 2900 BC. It then survived until 2550 BC. In radiocarbon years around 4800 to 4100 BP are set, ie calibrated 3550 to 2700 BC. Chr.

structure

Possible relationship with the eye motif from Los Millares

The Peu Richard culture can be further subdivided in terms of time and space. The time sequence is as follows:

  • Final stage - Peu-Richard final - 4300 to 4100 BP or 2950 to 2700 BC Chr.
  • Recent stage - Peu-Richard récent (also Peu-Richard II ) - 4600 to 4300 BP or 3350 to 2950 BC BC (also 3100 to 2900 BC)
  • Ancient stage - Peu-Richard ancien (also Peu-Richard I ) - 4800 to 4600 BP or 3550 to 3350 BC BC (also 3400 to 3100 BC)

As a result, the ancient stage began around 3550 BC. And the final stage lasted until 2700 BC. Chr.

Facies

Spatially, an Atlantic facies is distinguished from a continental facies . However, these facies are not strictly separated from one another, but overlap in the space of the type locality. The Atlantic facies are characterized in their ceramics by vases with hollowed-out decorations, fluting and furrows, openwork handles and also by flat-bottomed vases, which, however, unlike the previous Matignons culture, no longer have any basket prints. The continental facies also have the same type of vase, but differ in their decorations, which emerge three-dimensionally and are provided with ribs and cords.

Sites

In addition to the type locality Peu-Richard in the Charente-Maritime, the following sites of the Peu-Richard culture are now known:

See also

literature

  • Vincent Ard: Apport de la technologie céramique à la caractérisation des cultures du Néolithique récent du Center-Ouest de la France (3600-2900 avant J.-C.) . In: 8e RMPR - Marges, frontières et transgressions . Marseille 2008, p. 41-59 .
  • Pierrick Fouéré and Marie-Hélène Dias-Meirinho: Les industries lithiques taillées des IVe et IIIe millénaires dans le Center-ouest et Sud-ouest de la France . In: BAR International Series 1884 . Toulouse 2008, p. 231-258 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ E. Eschasserieux: Le camp du néolithique Peurichard (Charente-inférieure) . In: Recueil de la Commission des Arts et monuments historiques de la Charente-inférieure et Société de l'Archéologie de Saintes . t. III, 1884, p. 191-215 .
  2. ↑ P. Fouéré and M.-H. Dias-Meirinho: Les industries lithiques taillées des IVe et IIIe millénaires dans le Center-Ouest et le Sud-Ouest de la France . In: Les industries lithiques taillées des IVe et IIIe millénaires en Europe occidentale . BAR International Series 1884, Toulouse 2008, p. 231-258 .
  3. ↑ A. Nouel et al .: L'ossuaire neolithique d'Eteauville commune de Lutz-en-Dunois (Eure-et-Loir) . In: Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française . t. 62, 1965, pp. 576-648 .
  4. ^ Jean Guilaine: La France d'avant la France . Hachette, Paris 1980, ISBN 978-2-01-011134-1 , pp. 349 .
  5. ↑ Vincent Ard: Produire et échanger au Neolithique: traditions céramiques entre Loire et Gironde au IVe millénaire . In: Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques . Paris 2014, p. 387 .
  6. ^ J. Roussot-Laroque: Le groupe de Roquefort dans son contexte atlantique . In: Revue Archéologique de l'Ouest . sup. n ° 1, 1986, p. 167-188 .
  7. ↑ D. Barraud, S. Cassen, M. Schwaller and C. Sireix: Sauvetages archéologiques sur le site du Pétreau à Abzac (Gironde) . In: Revue Aquitania . tape 4 , 1986, pp. 2-37 .
  8. ^ J. Roussot-Larroque and A. Villes: Fouilles pré- et protohistoriques à La Lède du Gurp (Grayan-et-L'Hôpital, Gironde) . In: Revue archéologique de Bordeaux . tape 79 , 1988, pp. 19-60 .
  9. ↑ Roger Jousseaume: À propos de l'enceinte fossoyée de Champ-Durand à Nieul-sur-l'Autize (Vendée) . In: Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française . 96, no 3, 1999, p. 401-408 .
  10. ↑ Claude Burnez and Pierrick Fouéré: Les enceintes néolithiques de Diconche à Saintes (Charente-Maritime): une périodisation de l'Artenac . In: SPF . Paris 1999, p. 829 .
  11. ^ JP Mohen and D. Bergougnan: Le camp néolithique de chez Reine à Semussac (Charente Maritime) . In: Gallia Préhistoire . t. 27, 1984, pp. 7-40 .
  12. ↑ JP Pautreau: L'habitat Peu-richardien de la Sauzaie (Charente Maritime) . DRAC Poitou Charentes, Poitiers 1974.
  13. ↑ Claude Burnez: Enceintes néolithiques. La Grande Prairie à Vibrac (Charente-Maritime) . 1996, p. 83 .