Early Bronze Age chieftain burial found in France

An Early Bronze Age estate with a richly furnished chieftain burial in the town of Écouché-les-Vallées in northwestern France’s Normandy region. It dates to around 1900-1800 B.C. and contains valuable grave goods including arrowheads, daggers and a fragment of a rock crystal pendant.

Archaeologists are excavating the site in advance of quarry expansion and have so far unearthed evidence of a Neolithic settlement as well as a grave from the Bronze Age Armorican Tumulus culture. The culture is known for the elaborate burials of their elites covered by a mound of earth (hence the name), but their graves had varied designs. Pit graves like this one are common. While the tumuli contained the remains of a single chieftain at the top of social hierarchy, less prominent graves are also deemed chiefly tombs based on the prestigious grave goods they contained. Daggers, axes and arrowheads were symbols of wealth and power, not just weapons.

The pit grave at Écouché-les-Vallées was originally covered by a tumulus, now lost. Most of tumuli have been found in Brittany, with only six known so far in Normandy. No skeletal remains were found in the tomb. The highly acidic soil in the area devoured the bone.

It contained 31 flint arrowheads of exceptionally refined craftsmanship. They are of the Armorican type: ie, finely cut to an extremely thin edge out of blond flint. The two bronze daggers found in the grave are also of the Armorican type, characterized by their riveted fastening and mesh decoration along the edges. The larger of the two is a foot long and was sheathed in leather, fragments of which remain on the blade. The other is eight inches long and was in a wicker sheath.

The discovery of the Écouché-les-Vallées tomb echoes another discovery in the neighboring commune of Loucé and fits into a broader context, as several exceptional Early Bronze Age sites have been identified in the area: a cult enclosure in Loucé, a few hundred meters away, and a large enclosure in Moulins-sur-Orne, six kilometers away. This presence of several Early Bronze Age sites on both sides of the Orne River contributes to making the area a vast domain, of which the Écouché-les-Vallées burial would represent the ruling elite.

* This article was originally published here