Late Antique necropolis with deliberately broken pottery found in France

A necropolis from Late Antiquity has been discovered in in Bourget-du-Lac, southeastern France. The burials contain artifacts including coins, bronze jewelry, amber beads and locally-produced pottery that attest to the funerary rites of the period.

The site, excavated prior to construction of a housing development, was on the outskirts of the ancient town. Archaeologists found remains ranging in date from the Roman era to the Modern Era, with the earliest being a wood post quadrangular structure dating to the late 1st century B.C./early 1st century A.D.). This building was replaced with a larger masonry structure in the Imperial era. Only the foundations remain, so its exact function is unknown, but archaeologists believe it was a dwelling initially. A large, very well-preserved kiln was found next to the building. It has been radiocarbon dates to the 3rd and 4th centuries, so it was a later addition.

Adjacent to the masonry house is a burial ground in use from the 4th century through the first half of the 6th century. (A single later tomb dating to the 7th/8th centuries suggests the necropolis maintained its purpose in the collective memory even after a gap in use of more than a century.) Approximately 60 individual inhumation burials have been unearthed, arranged in rows that are increasingly dense with graves as they approach the dwelling.

The deceased were buried in cysts formed by reused tegulae (large clay roof tiles) or by rubble walls that supported wooden planks. They were placed in the graves in supine position facing west, north or south. Some of them wore jewelry — copper alloy bracelet with serpent head terminals, ivory bangles, amber beads — and had ceramic jugs, pots and bowls as grave goods.

The clay-coated pottery is typical of a locally manufactured type made in the workshop of Portout on the northern shores of Lake Bourget. (Bourget-du-Lac is on the southern shore about 15 miles away.) Some of the pottery bears signs of having been deliberately broken in the funerary rites. They weren’t smashed, but rather carefully broken, for example the neck of a jug snapped off the body.

Biological data have already made it possible to define a community space without selective recruitment, where adult graves (men and women) are located alongside those of children, sometimes in groupings that could reflect social or family ties between individuals.

* This article was originally published here