Retour à Sciez. Les Petits Crêts, un village du Néolithique moyen au bord du lac Léman (original) (raw)
In 2001, an archaeological survey by means of core dril-lings, covering 4 931 linear metres for a total core depth of 1 000 metres of described sediments, was conducted in the swamps around the Grand Lac of Clairvaux. On the 50 hecta-res thus surveyed, 18 habitation sites dating from the Neolithic and Bronze age. Four of these were dated to the first half of the IVth millennium and belong to the Néolithique Moyen Bourguignon (N.M.B.). The two principal sites, with accumulations of organic remains almost one metre thick at the centre of the villages, are situated one on the North shore (Clairvaux VII) and the other (Clairvaux XIV) on the South shore of the Grand Lac; these two long-occupied villages were constructed on wetlands, at the edge of a lacustrine plat-form composed of lake silt which rapidly fell away into the lake; on the landward side, the villages were probably protected by a palisade. The site of Clairvaux/La Motte-aux-Magnins, which was most likely occupied for a shorter duration, was situated on an ancient island, which was only accessible by canoe, and comprised a few rows of closely packed rectangular houses. The fourth village (Clairvaux VIII), was most probably a hamlet of some ten houses built in row on the edge of a bog, along an ancient shoreline dating from a period of high water. Its life-span was very short. Other than establishing a chronological sequence between 4000-3600 BC, the relative contemporaneity and the sequen-ce of occupation of these different villages, could not be established from the core drillings alone. The four villages can be grouped in pairs, with one at the northern end and the other at the southern end of the Grand Lac, under approximately similar topographical and environmental conditions: wide littoral platform, land subject to regular floodings close to a fresh water stream, distance greater than 50 metres from dry land, defensible position and easy access to the closest cultivable land. The decision to build on damp ground (Clairvaux VII) or frankly wetland (the three other sites) most certainly required an adaptation of the architecture to provide raised supported on piles, so as to escape the humidity and floods