Les dépôts de l'enclos cultuel hallstattien de Vix " les Herbues " et la question des enceintes quadrangulaires

Abstract

To date, papers relating to the aristocratic sanctuary of Vix «Les Herbues» have focalized on the study and the dating of the statues. We propose here, for the first time, the study of detrital deposits found in the enclosure ditches. Stratigraphical analysis made possible by the 3D recording of all the artefacts reveals that the different fill phases of the ditch are in fact contemporary with each other. Indicators of ritual context cannot seemingly be obtained from animal bone assemblages; however pottery assemblages and of course the presence of the statues can pertain to ritual. The absence, to a certain extent, of large storage jars and the overrepresentation of bowls and cups is to be noted. Even though general agreement has been reached on the ritual nature of the site, two authors, S. Verger and P.-Y. Milcent, uphold the hypothesis of a funerary enclosure with at its centre a cremation burial housed in a metallic urn. In this paper, we reconsider this conjecture, underlining the structural errors of its reasoning which is mainly based on the erroneous interpretation of excavation records. If all of the information discovered in the study of the site is taken into account, we reach the conclusion that the «Herbues» enclosure was in fact a ritual structure devoted to ancestor worship where the statues are the heroic or even the divine representations of ancestors honoured during ceremonies which involve banquets (traduction Rebecca Peake).