L'occupation gauloise au nord-ouest de Caen. L'évaluation en sondage du plateau de Thaon (Calvados)

Abstract

The protohistoric occupation north-west of Caen seems to be mainly guided by the hydrographie network of the La Seulles river coastal basin. During the La Tène period, seulement densification is revealed by clusters of enclosures separated by the short tributaries of the La Seulles river. On the limited area of Thaon, several Iron age farms could have been organized together during the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C.. Most of them would have been abandonned before the end of the first half of the lst century B.C.. Of the eiglit sites sampled, only one shows an occupation stretching from the late La Tène period up to the first half of the 1st century A.D, probably uninterrupted. During the Middle and Late La Tène periods, arable fanning is clearly attested by seeds and numerous storage pits. Arable farming may indeed have played a major role in the local Iron age economy, production exceeding subsistance needs. In this agrarian context, an enclosure of evident spécial status has yielded deposits of horse bones and pottery. The distribution of the farms in Thaon during the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C. could reveal an elementary agrarian system based on close interrelation between these settlements. In this area of the Caen plain, the hypothesis of a network of farms cooperating together to clear land on a large scale, as early as the end of the middle Tène period, seems higlily likely. The existance of a network of scattered independant farms is thus on the contrary unconvincing. Romanisation would not have led to the systematic reoccupation of these sites. The new agricultural occupation would not have had any notable relationship with the Iron age precedent.