Abstract
In the first half of the 3rd millennium BC, the peasant and metallurgical communities of Occitania (southeastern France) produced and erected a large number of anthropomorphic stelae in their respective territories: Rouergue and High-Languedoc for the Treilles culture, Low-Languedoc for the Fontbouisse culture. Several of these stone objects display particular marks on the face: “périnasales” in one case, “circumoculaires” in the other. Such patterns can be identified as representations of tattoos or scarifications. They are the most obvious part of the opposition system revealed by the structural analysis of the stelae designed by the two cultural groups. The latter would thus have materialized in their respective choices of plastic expression an antagonism probably centered around the copper mining in the Massif Central, on a model close to that brought to light by Claude Lévi-Strauss among the Indians of British Columbia.
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