L'architecture et les occupations du Bronze final 1 et du Bronze final 2b du site du Gournier, secteur de Fortuneau, à Montélimar (Drôme)

Abstract

The rescue excavation of the site of Fortuneau, though still in progress, has provided an opportunity to apply precise excavation and sedimentary analysis methods to large surfaces of a habitat occupied two times during the Final Bronze Age. This double methodology compensates for the limits imposed by the instability of anthropogenic structures and post-depositional processes. The chronological distinction is based on stratigraphic data, pottery reference assemblages and radiocarbon dates. In BF1 and BF2b, we find architectural structures with supporting posts, which are still poorly known in the south-east. These constructions are associated with various anthropogenic sedimentary forms that suggest the possibility of horticultural practices nearby. An isolated building found in the Final Bronze Age 1 corresponds well to similar finds in the Prealps. The cultural components of the pottery assemblage correlates, with a few differences in two excavation zones, with the Rhône Basin, and more broadly, the Rhône-Saône-Jura zone, as well as the Midi and Alps zones. At the scale of the vast site of Gournier, different scattered installations that could correspond to a series of farms were discovered. In the Final Bronze Age 2, a town expanded to cover a large surface, though its true extension remains unknown. Its organization corresponds to that often observed in the Rhône Bronze Age. In particular, we find the coexistence of several architectural ensembles composed of a habitation building associated with one or two possible agricultural buildings. A series of granaries on posts is concentrated at the junction between a sector in which we observe rather isolated and close architectural groups and a sector in which the spaces between buildings clearly tend to become smaller. This configuration corresponds to the evolutionary scheme of land habitats in the north-east Alpine zone during the Final Bronze Age, with a trend toward the grouping together of houses and the concentrationdensification of the town, but whose extension toward the Midi is a new element that raises new questions. This phenomenon, which concerned the Jurassian zone of the eastern Rhine-Switzerland-France culture, contradicts the hypothesis of a Rhône and Languedoc cultural group whose limits would be suggested by the recurrent presence of numerous pottery types. It would thus appear that these architectural choices were related to symbolic – and political ? – constraints with a greater geographic extension, rather than to cultural expression. The future necessary development of research on the Bronze Age in southern France will allow us to test this hypothesis.