Loire Valley Research Articles

Middle Loire Valley settlement: First chronology using ESR on quartz grains

Over the past two decades, stepped-terrace systems within the Loire River basin's tributaries have undergone comprehensive multidisciplinary studies, encompassing Quaternary geology, prehistory and geochronology. Surprisingly, the geochronological exploration of the Loire River itself, the longest river in France, and its fossil stepped terraces system has been relatively limited, especially in the middle section near Orléans. However, for about fifty years, this region has been pivotal in providing evidence of the historical confluence of two ancient rivers, shaping the current Loire Valley. Researchers have suggested the existence of a Plio-Pleistocene Loire paleo-river, flowing northward from the Massif Central to the Seine valley and eventually reaching the English Channel. Subsequently, this Loire River would have underwent a reorientation of its flow westward, from the Blois area to the Atlantic Ocean, after being disconnected from its previous course.The absence of alluvial deposits in the area between the current Loire valley and the Seine valley, attributed to substantial erosion, prevents direct exploration of evidence related to the south-north paleo-river. To address this challenge, the hypothesis suggests that the preserved alluvial terraces in the intermediate sector were established post-capture, offering an opportunity to determine when this significant geological event occurred. Through the application of Electron Spin Resonance (ESR) quartz dating, a chronological model for the Middle Loire has been then constructed. This model identifies five distinct phases in the evolution of the Middle Loire system, spanning from 800 ka to the present day. These phases indicate a gradual capture process, initiating between 900 and 800 ka, resulting in alterations to fluvial dynamics and ultimately leading to the establishment of the current course approximately 250 ka.

Effect of curing conditions and formulation on the adhesive strength of stone-siporex mortar composite

Background: Adhesive strength is one of the most important properties of the hardened mortar, and influenced by mortar workability (i.e. mortar water content), and substrate roughness surface degree. Objective: This study aims to measure the adhesion strength between three different hydrated aerial lime mortars, and the two most common building units in old and modern building in Loire valley in France: Tuffeau and Siporex, under different relative humidity (12,66,98%) and curing periods (7,28,90 days). Materials and Methods: These mortars include: B/F (1:5.6: Moisture=46 %, aggregate stone powder pass sieve NO.2mm), B/W (1:5.6: Moisture=44 %, aggregate stone powder pass sieveNO.2mm and retained on sieve NO. 0.16mm), and B/F/M (1:5.6: Moisture=35%: superplasticizer water reducer Melment F10 (2.5% of lime amount), aggregate stone powder pass sieve NO.2mm). Numerous complementary techniques have been used to achieve this study, such as: x-ray diffraction, coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry, mercury intrusion porosimetry, mortars axial expansion by consolidation apparatus, and Proceq-DY-215 apparatus for adhesive strength measurement. Results: The results showed that expansion of B/F, B/W, and B/F/M has little effect on their adhesion strength with Tuffeau /Siporex substrates. Also, the adopted relative humidity variations had a limited effect on the adhesion strength of B/W along the curing periods (7, 28, and 90 days), with noticeable effect for the other mortars. Conclusions: The conclusions referred to the important impact of the degree of substrate surface roughness on the adhesive strength of all used mortars, where the use of Siporex as substrate recorded a clear advantage compared to Tuffeau under all used relative humidity and curing periods.

Detection of limestone spalling in 3D survey images using deep learning

Planning the restoration operations of cultural heritage buildings requires an accurate and up-to-date knowledge of the different areas of deterioration. This step is critical to perform the convenient reparation on time. Traditionally, the building analysis is performed by experts based on visual assessments. Which is highly time and resource consuming and complicated by each expert subjectivity. The rapid advancement of computer vision and deep learning inspire the development of automatic damage detection approaches. In this paper, we propose a novel architecture for automatic detection of stone deterioration from existing color image acquired for 3D modeling. The dataset consists of 1012 color images of spalling deterioration, a recurrent deterioration on limestone masonry of castles in the Loire valley. The proposed architecture combining YOLOv5 and transformer layers achieved a F1-score of 85% and an average precision of 81%, outperforming state-of-the-art approaches for automatic damage detection in color images using deep learning.

Landholding in the Loire valley and the late Carolingian economy (c.840–c.1000)

This article builds on recent work on the Carolingian economy by giving an overview of landholding patterns and associated economic activity in the Loire valley in the ninth and tenth centuries. It demonstrates that only individuals and institutions with access to patronage from the royal fisc possessed large, unified estates; the majority of land was held as small, fragmented farmsteads. Moreover, these small parcels of land changed hands on a regular basis through grants and leases, allowing investment, agricultural development, and social and material returns for their owners. The article suggests that these small‐scale property transactions were the basis for growth and dynamism in the late Carolingian economy.

A Socio-Ecological Approach to Conserve and Manage Riverscapes in Designated Areas: Cases of the Loire River Valley and Dordogne Basin, France

The environmental management of rivers faces a substantial geographical problem: due to their elongate shape and their position at the valley bottom, the area that they cover is fragmented by territorial borders. Therefore, only very few river basins or substantial parts of them have yet been assigned as dedicated sites (nature reserves, parks, etc.). Commonly, these sites occur in a scattered pattern within the riverscape and belong to different administrative units, which makes coordinated conservation and management difficult. Moreover, access to documented results is limited, and the practical experience of site managers remains an unexploited source of knowledge. Here, we compare two sites, the Loire valley (with a large zone protected by a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Natura 2000 sites network, and a French Regional Natural Park, which are partially overlapping) and the Dordogne watershed (entirely belonging to the first UNESCO Biosphere Reserve of this kind and a French Public Basin Establishment). The targets concerning conservation and sustainable management of these sites differ, however, they all focus on cultural and ecological sustainability. Combining reports and interviews with the respective site managers with literature back searches, and analyzing these data with case study and content analysis methods, we addressed the following questions: (1) What are the priority management issues, including threats that impact the site from outside, and how are they tackled? (2) Who are the stakeholders and what are their interrelationships? (3) What are the dynamics of socio-ecological systems related to riverscapes? (4) How to conserve and manage riverscapes with socio-ecological approaches? and (5) What are the best management practices from the Loire River Valley and Dordogne basin cases that can be harnessed in other riverscapes? We show that the Loire River Valley and Dordogne River basin present positive examples for a transdisciplinary socio-ecological approach to conserving and managing riverscapes, integrating diverse stakeholder knowledge in participatory decision-making, recognizing the natural character of the river, and coupling social and hydrological systems. The greatest achievement of the site managers is that they have built up trust and found feasible solutions for satisfying the different interests of diverse stakeholders. Ingenuity and perseverance, combined with excellent moderation skills, were the most important characteristics leading to success. The overall target of this paper is to evidence problems and their solutions concerning the management of dedicated sites that are connected to rivers, to encourage the creation of further sites of this type, and to facilitate cooperation between different types of dedicated sites.

Agroecological transition strategies and collective action dynamics within geographical indication systems: case study of the Loire valley wine basin

Agroecological transition strategies and collective action dynamics within geographical indication systems: case study of the Loire valley wine basin

BEGINNING OF THE RENAISSANCE? PHILOLOGICAL BEHAVIOUR IN EARLY FRENCH PRE-UNIVERSITIES

The article will demonstrate how early French pre-universities in the Loire valley began to look at texts written by Roman writers such as Horace, Ovid and Virgil with the aim of interpreting and explaining the text as Roman texts, without trying to search for ‘hidden meanings’. The article will focus on the philological Ovid-commentary by William of Orléans (c1200), this being a clear example of this philological way of thinking. This approach to classical ‘pagan’ texts provoked a strong reaction that finally resulted in an allegorising interpretation of the classical texts and often the elimination of such texts from the school curriculum. This was the situation which early humanists protested against.

Phylogenetic, functional and taxonomic responses of wild bee communities along urbanisation gradients

Increasing urbanisation is one of the primary drivers of land-use change that threaten biodiversity. Wild bee communities have been reported with contrasting responses to urbanisation, with varying effects on abundance and taxonomical diversity. The suite of functional traits exhibited by wild bee species might determine their persistence in urban areas. Urbanisation thus can impose an environmental filter with potential consequences on the functional and phylogenetical diversity of wild bee communities.Here, we sampled 2944 wild bee specimens from 156 species in 29 sites located along an urbanisation gradient using a replicated design in three mid-sized cities in the Loire valley (France). We show that urban landscape cover has a negative effect on overall species richness and taxonomical diversity indices, while total abundance remains constant. Species loss was taxon dependent, mainly driven by Andrenidae and Halictidae. Only a few species, especially of the genus Lasioglossum, were positively affected by the urban landscape cover.Urban and peri-urban areas differed in their composition of bee assemblages. Species turnover was the main component of beta diversity, driving community dissimilarities through the urban gradient. Urbanisation favours bees with small body sizes, social structure and extended flight periods but did not affect the phylogenetic or the functional diversity of communities.Our findings have implications for understanding the factors involved in the environmental filter exerted through the urban gradient on bee communities helping to implement conservation measures and managing urban spaces for bees.

Remote sensing of american maple in alluvial forests: a case study in an island complex of the Loire valley (France)

Due to their particular topographic position between land and river, riparian forests are ecosystems rich in biodiversity. In France, along the Middle Loire (from Nevers to Angers), Black poplar (Populus nigra L.) forests are often in mixtures with the American maple (Acer negundo L.), introduced into the country in the 18th century. We tested the detectability of American maple by LiDAR and very high-resolution multispectral imagery on an island complex. We found that coupling the point cloud height standard deviation with a vegetation index in the red, green and blue spectrums discriminated American maple with a success rate of more than 90%.

“Die van de religie”: protestanten op Grand Tour in Frankrijk in de zeventiende eeuw

The French Loire valley was one of the main attractions on the Dutch Grand Tour in the 17th century. It had prestigious academies, private tutors of aristocratic skills such as fencing and formal dancing, and religious communities of Huguenots. This article examines how Protestant Dutch elite travellers expressed their interest, empathy, and connection to these groups of like-minded individuals. Travellers reflected both on past events of the 16th-century French Wars of Religion and on current difficulties. Focusing on the years leading up to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which drastically changed France’s religious situation in 1685, this article discusses how travellers presented the Huguenots’ troubles.

Links between size fractionation, chemical speciation of dissolved copper and chemical speciation of dissolved organic matter in the Loire estuary

Environmental contextThe toxicity of copper to aquatic life is highly dependent on its chemical form. In the vineyards of the Loire valley, mixtures of copper compounds are increasingly being used as fungicides. Our study investigating the origin and behaviour of dissolved copper on the land-sea continuum of the Loire advances our understanding of the chemical forms and fate of copper in estuarine systems. AbstractWe present data on the organic speciation of dissolved copper (dCu) in the Loire estuary for the soluble (<0.02µm) and dissolved (<0.45µm) fractions. These results were interpreted according to the distribution of natural organic matter along the estuary. We observed a high concentration of dCu (80nmolkg−1) upstream of the tidal front (S=0.1, where S is the salinity), possibly induced by drainage from vineyards located on the watershed of the estuary, and a concentration typical of coastal seawater at the end of the salinity gradient (3–4nmolkg−1). dCu showed a non-conservative distribution along the estuary with a notably strong decrease in concentration at the very first stage of mixing (S ~ 0.5) that increased again at low salinity (S=4.7). The latter increase in the concentration of dCu was related to the supply of colloidal copper induced by particle desorption in the maximum turbidity zone. The organic speciation of dCu revealed that the complexing capacity of copper ligands (LCu, up to 147 nanomoles of Cu per kilogram of water) exceeded dCu in both the soluble and dissolved fractions, which kept the activity of cupric ions below toxic levels for most unicellular phytoplankton. Humic substances comprised up to 95% of LCu in the continental shelf sample, but their complexing capacity did not account for all of the LCu in the inner estuary. We conducted pseudopolarographic experiments and found two other additional ligand classes: thiol-like and amino-acids/proteins. While humic substances are the dominant component of dissolved organic matter (DOM), the study of DOM suggested the release of colloidal DOM from a wastewater treatment plant. This structure could be a major source of proteinaceous LCu in the system that changes the dCu speciation in the middle of the estuary.

Works with Texts in the Vernacular by Antoine Busnoys

Reviewed by: Works with Texts in the Vernacularby Antoine Busnoys Peter Woetmann Christoffersen Antoine Busnoys. Works with Texts in the Vernacular. Edited by Leeman L. Perkins. (Antoine Busnoys, Collected Works, volume 1.) (Masters and Monuments of the Renaissance, volume 5.) New York: The Broude Trust, 2018. [Part 1A, Music: contents, p. vii-xi; publisher's preface, p. xv; acknowledgments, p. xvii-xviii; editorial principles, p. xxi-xxiii; sigla, p. xxv-xxviii; score, p. 1-251; poems with attributions, p. 253-57. Part 1B, Commentary: contents, p. x-xiii; historical introduction, p. 1-10; sources and sigla, p. 13-79; commentary, p. 81-417; appendices, p. 421-29; bibliog., p. 433-53. ISBN 0-8540-7307-9. $150 (inclusive of both parts).] Antoine Busnois (ca. 1435-1492, "Busnoys" in this edition) was one of the most influential composers of French chansons among the musicians whose fame began to flourish around 1460. As far as we know, his career was based in central France and Burgundy where he worked in Tours and Poitiers as a singer and master of the choirboys until he entered the chapel of the future Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, in 1467. After the duke's death in 1477 he stayed on in the chapel of Mary of Burgundy and Maximilian of Austria. His last post seems to have been that of cantor at St. Saveur in Bruges. Perhaps he did not have the same knack for catchy tunes as his contemporaries at the Burgundian court, Hayne van Ghizeghem and Robert Morton, but his strong musical personality, his originality, and his will to seek new ways made him a dominating figure in the last third of the century. Busnois is the composer best represented beside the chapel master of the French kings, Johannes Ockeghem, in the so-called Loire valley chansonniers, all of which were created during the 1470s. They are a group of six small-format song collections that have been named after a mixture of former owners and their present locations: the Nivelle, Dijon, Laborde, Wolfenbüttel, Copenhagen, and Leuven chansonniers. Their sizes vary. We find big collections of songs that were expanded several times (Dijon and Laborde), and smaller books with more concentrated repertories. It was not customary to include names of composers or poets with the songs. In three of the smaller collections (Copenhagen, Wolfen-büttel, and Leuven) such ascriptions are missing entirely, and in the others, the names of composers appear only sporadically. Therefore, a great many of the songs remain anonymous, and we can connect some of them with individual composers only because they appear in later sources with ascriptions. A few of these sources of the following decades originated in France, but the majority were copied in far-away Italy, mostly after Busnois's main period of creativity, and some of them contain [End Page 694]many songs bearing his name, thereby testifying to his renown as a composer. The sources do not always agree on the names that are placed above the songs, and the conflicting attributions make the job of the modern editor only more difficult. Everyone who has researched this repertory will maintain a personal list of anonymous songs that might have been composed by Busnois, songs of striking originality and beauty, which in later sources, however, have not been furnished with ascriptions. No one will probably ever agree on which ones ought to be included in a Busnois canon, so they must of course be excluded from the present edition of his secular music. Leeman L. Perkins's edition of Busnois's secular works supplements the volumes of his Latin-texted works, mostly sacred, which were edited by Richard Taruskin in 1990 as Masters and Monuments of the Renaissance, vols. 5 part 2 (music) and 5 part 3 (commentary). Perkins's volumes encompass seventy-eight numbers, which include three poems without music (nos. 76–78), two songs of uncertain attribution (nos. 74–75), and seventy-three songs attributed to Busnois in at least one source; some numbers appear with variant versions, contrafacta, or an intabulation appended. Perkins has simply chosen to publish every single piece of secular music that has been preserved with an...

Early Middle Ages Houses of Gien (France) from the Inside: Geoarchaeology and Archaeobotany of 9th–11th c. Floors

ABSTRACTAt Gien (France), indoor floors from early Middle Ages occupation (8th–10th c. AD) are very well preserved, providing a new reference for archaeological investigation in northern France. This site is located on an outcrop, 20 m above the Loire valley, where a 15th c. castle stands now. The medieval occupation combines high-status houses with crafting and agricultural areas. They constitute a new urban nucleus, which grew 2 km east from an ancient Roman settlement. During the rescue excavation, four buildings of different status were sampled and studied using an integrated approach, combining stratigraphy, micromorphology, chemical, macro-remain and phytolith analyses. Micromorphological investigations helped to identify 74 built floors, from 0.5 to 150 mm thick, made with transformed local clay or imported silty earth. Mineral floors were covered by vegetal ones, consisting of crop processing refuse. These litters include an abundance of phytoliths and some seeds, both produced by cultivated cereals, which were processed in situ, such as Triticum durum, Secale cereale and Hordeum vulgare. The refuse above the mineral and vegetal floors were trampled. They were produced not only by domestic activities, such as cooking and eating, but also by metallurgic activities and animal husbandry. The investigation of a contemporary pit indicated that, despite the large amount of refuse, floors were well maintained and regularly rebuilt. The spatial distribution of waste indicated that a single space could be dedicated to several activities, which were not necessarily separated by new floors. Moreover, the total absence of bioturbation allowed the study of a stage of dark earth formation, by comparing it to the contemporaneous mechanical disturbance of a part of the strata which occurred when building new floors. All these results give new evidence of the richness and the complexity of the early Middle Ages town, in addition to help identifying the activities which could take place in early castral areas.

P6589The impact of hypertension on stroke and mortality in patients with atrial fibrillation: the loire valley atrial fibrillation project

P6589The impact of hypertension on stroke and mortality in patients with atrial fibrillation: the loire valley atrial fibrillation project

Leonardo da Vinci: Images of the Brain

Leonardo (1452–1519) produced hundreds of anatomical drawings from at least 30 dissections he conducted over a period of several decades. He began this endeavor to more accurately portray the human body; he continued the studies to create a treatise on human anatomy. In addition, numerous animal dissections and drawings were prepared by Leonardo. In 1490–1492 Leonardo drew an image (RL 12603r, K&P 32) in keeping with contemporary concepts that the cerebral ventricles and the psychic pneuma or animal spirits they contained were responsible for function of the brain. The ventricles are illustrated as three linear spaces with the optic nerves projecting to the ventricles. With this traditional view, Leonardo was perhaps the first to indicate the meningeal envelope of the optic nerves, and possibly the first to illustrate the frontal nasal sinus. Leonardo likened the coverings of the scalp and brain to layers of an onion, an analogy represented by the sectioned onion in the upper left image. Leonardo began to question connection of cranial nerves to the ventricles. This led him to prepare a wax cast of bovine cerebral ventricles to ascertain their true configuration. A hole was drilled through the underside of the skull, a syringe inserted into the 3rd ventricle and molten wax injected. For this first known example of casting of a body cavity, Leonardo applied the technique used in casting bronze statues. After the wax hardened, he removed the brain and dissected away the tissue. Leonardo then drew a series of studies on paper to illustrate the results (RL 19127r, K&P 104r). A drawing of the wax cast is at bottom right of this sheet. At top left, he has superimposed the cast onto the brain. At top right, Leonardo has drawn a brain with the ventricles in place, sectioned in the mid‐line from superior to inferior. In this image, the forebrain and midbrain are fully divided. Each half is retracted laterally. Below the level of the cerebral aqueduct, the hindbrain is only partially divided and the lower hindbrain remains intact. The central figure in the lower half of the sheet is an inferior view of the intact brain. The radiating feather‐like structure centered at the pituitary is a rete mirabile—present in cattle, not humans.Even though Leonardo used a bovine specimen, the brain he has represented is human. There is a horizontal forebrain, a midbrain flexure and an inferiorly projecting hindbrain. This is indicative of an upright posture with a sub‐terminal foramen magnum as in man. A comparison of bovine and human brains in the accompanying figures indicates the proportions and configuration of brain components are human. It was not unusual at this period in anatomical history to transfer and transform structures from different species into the corresponding human structures. Human dissection was difficult to accomplish; animal dissection was not. In Rome, 1516, a disgruntled associate delivered a complaint against him to Pope Leo X and to hospital Santo Spirito, where he was performing his studies. Leonardo relocated to Amboise in the Loire valley under patronage of Francis I. He died 2 May 1519 at the chateau of Cloux. It would be several centuries before his studies were published.This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.

The chronology of Late Pleistocene thermal contraction cracking derived from sand wedge OSL dating in central and southern France

Much of France remained unglaciated during the Late Quaternary and was subjected to repeated phases of periglacial activity. Numerous periglacial features have been reported but disentangling the environmental and climatic conditions they formed under, the timing and extent of permafrost and the role of seasonal frost has remained elusive. The primary sandy infillings of relict sand-wedges and composite-wedge pseudomorphs record periglacial activity. As they contain well-bleached quartz-rich aeolian material they are suitable for optically stimulated luminescence dating (OSL). This study aims to reconstruct when wedge activity took place in two regions of France; Northern Aquitaine and in the Loire valley. Results from single-grain OSL measurements identify multiple phases of activity within sand wedges which suggest that wedge activity in France occurred at least 11 times over the last 100 ka. The most widespread events of thermal contraction cracking occurred between ca. 30 and 24 ka (Last Permafrost Maximum) which are concomitant with periods of high sand availability (MIS 2). Although most phases of sand-wedge growth correlate well with known Pleistocene cold periods, the identification of wedge activity during late MIS 5 and the Younger Dryas strongly suggests that these features do not only indicate permafrost but also deep seasonal ground freezing in the context of low winter insolation. These data also suggest that the overall young ages yielded by North-European sand-wedges likely result from poor record of periglacial periods concomitant with low sand availability and/or age averaging inherent with standard luminescence methods.

Typicité sensorielle de vins de l'AOC Coteaux du Layon et acceptabilité par les acteurs (professionnels et consommateurs) de vins avec des titres d'alcool volumique plus faibles

In order to maintain an optimum sugar / acid balance in a changing context, winegrowers of the Coteaux du Layon PDO, a sweet wine of the middle Loire valley, wish to know if a final alcohol content (TAV) lower than the minimum imposed by the regulation of the PDO (11% vol. today) would affect the typicality of the wines. To answer this question, a study was carried out in 4 steps. 1) To know the expected typicality of these wines, focus groups were conducted with 26 professionals. 2) In order to assess the acceptability of lower TAV wines, based on a sample of 24 wines (commercial wines and experimental wines with TAV between 8% vol. and 10% vol.), 31 professionals scored levels of exemplarity. 3) A trained panel made a fine sensory description. 4) Finally, a selection of 8 wines from these 24 were evaluated by 163 consumers, they scored levels of preference. The results of steps 1) and 2) show a strong consensus among professionals to assess the exemplarity of wines. Experimental wines obtained exemplary scores above the average of the scale and can therefore be considered as good examples. In step 3), the trained panel generated the sensory attributes to describe the wines: 21 descriptors of odors and aromas and 6 of flavors, which reveal the sensory complexity of the wines. In stage 4), in general, the 8 wines evaluated by the consumers were all appreciated. The results suggest that a sufficiently high amount of residual sugar content would enhance the acceptability of lower TAV wines by both professionals and consumers. The winegrowers of the syndicate of Coteaux du Layon PDO thus have factual elements to update the specification of the PDO (decreasing the minimum TAV threshold), in interaction with INAO (the French national institute of origin and quality).

The soil effects on the grapevine root system in several vineyards of the Loire valley (France)

The effects of different soil types on grapevine root distribution are presented and discussed for Loire Valley (France) conditions. Field studies with Cabernet franc/SO 4 root-stock vines showed four main rooting patterns in different soil types. A statistical analysis was used to determine the influence of several physical soil factors on root distribution. The soil water supply appears to have a beneficial effect on the root system. Conversely the penetrometer soil strength, bulk density and hydromorphic conditions are unfavourable for root development

Les vestiges d’habitat du Néolithique ancien de Quimper, Kervouyec (Finistère)

Until fairly recently, study of the Neolithic in Brittany was principally dedicated to the megalithic monuments due to the numerous sites there. Gradually, research was oriented towards settlement remains, notably through the development of rescue archaeology in the 1980s. This is particularly the case for the Early Neolithic and, for the first time in 1996, an important excavation was carried out on a house dated to the beginning of the fifth millennium in Le Haut-Mée, near Fougères (north-eastern Brittany). A few years later, in 2004, a second site was excavated at Betton, near Rennes, and recently, in 2014, a third one in Lannion not far from the north-western coast. These main settlements are complemented by numerous deposits of archaeological artefacts located by field surveys. However, for the whole region, less than ten sites dating from the beginning of the Neolithic have been discovered and the remains of Quimper Kervouyec, despite their partial preservation, demonstrate that neolithisation had reached the most western point of the Breton peninsula by the early fifth millennium. Prior to work on a road to bypass the town of Quimper (south-western Brittany), a small group of archaeological remains comprising two pits and a few postholes was discovered and excavated in 2005. A few hundred metres further east, a third pit was discovered in 2010 before the development of an urban area. These remains were located on a hillside, facing south-west, overlooking the Steïr river. In this hilly landscape, some natural flat platforms were chosen by the first farmers. The soil is composed of fine clay useful for different functions (covering wooden walls, making pottery). The geological substratum is very complex here and associates various granites and metamorphic rocks used by the Neolithic people. Due to their morphology (shallow depth, irregular contours, silty texture of the substratum) and their contents, the three pits discovered can be interpreted as having been dug for clay extraction and then progressively filled up with domestic waste material. Their contours are irregular and the asymmetrical section shows the direction of the extraction of the clay ; their depth is shallow and extraction stopped when the granite bedrock was reached. These excavations are similar to the lateral pits of houses in Early Neolithic hamlets. The preservation of a few postholes nearby and the type of waste found confirm the domestic nature of these structures. The archaeological material, quite abundant despite the small volume of remains preserved, is characteristic of the Early Neolithic and the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain culture. Four radiocarbon analyses, two of which were made on calcinated ceramic material, confirm the dating of the site to the first quarter of the fifth millennium. Pottery represents the principal component with around thirty pots identified from over five hundred potsherds. Petrographic analysis of the components reveals a local manufacture for most of the pottery. However, some rare pieces imported from beyond the Armorican massif are distinguished by the use of exogenous clay and the introduction of the ‘ chamotte’ technique. The morphological and decorative characteristics indicate a middle phase or the beginning of a recent phase of the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain culture. Spherical shapes and impressed decors are predominant, the applied cord typical of the recent phase almost absent. The lithic industry is mostly manufactured on flint of various origins with however a small preference for local and coastal resources. Long-distance importations came from central and western France. In spite of the small number of pieces, the lithic series indicates the maintaining of blade production on imported flint by means of a complex technical system. The presence and the nature of broken schist bracelets, typical artefacts of this culture, and the macro-tools mostly made on granite, reveal the Neolithic population’s good knowledge of their environment. The functional diversity of the macro-tools found on the site reveals that both domestic and craft activities were carried out, a characteristic of Neolithic settlements. The anthracological study of the charcoal highlights a progressive exploitation of the local forest, on the hill slopes and the bottom of surrounding valleys. Wood selection with oak dominant is typical of Early Neolithic sites. These settlement remains represent at present the most western traces of neolithisation in the Armorican Peninsula at the beginning of the fifth millennium, in addition to the few regional excavated sites. Detailed analysis of the archaeological artefacts – ceramics, lithics, stone bracelets, macro-tools, anthracology, petrography – reveals both local supply and long-distance relationships, in particular with the Loire valley and Touraine.

L’abbatiale carolingienne de Saint-Philbert-de-Grandlieu. Le chevet et ses aménagements

The Carolingian abbatial church of Saint-Philbert-de-Grandlieu. The chevet and its reworkings At the end of the nineteenth century, when the question arose as to whether to restore the abbey church of Saint-Philbert-de-Grandlieu, it was decided to build a new parish church and to convert the old building into a covered market. At the time, Léon Maître, archivist for the lower Loire valley, studied the monument, which he dated to the Carolingian period on the basis of a text written in the ninth century by the monk Ermentaire recounting the transfer in 836 of the relics of St Philibert from Herio (Noirmoutier) to Deas (Saint-Philbert-de-Grandlieu), because of the Viking threat. In the Miracula Ermentaire briefly describes the placement of the sarcophagus in the transept of the abbey and the partial reconstruction of the chevet. The excavations made by Père de la Croix indicated the structure of the monument, but some of his interpretations were immediately contested, notably by Léon Maître and Robert de Lasteyrie. In 1960, Pierre Lebouteux made a close analysis of the masonry, but could not arrive at a conclusion concerning the structure and date of the building without further excavations. On the basis of soundings and a new reading of the construction in 1997, the chevet of the abbey church was attributed without any doubt to the Carolingian period. The nave, rebuilt in the eleventh century, preserves only a few earlier elements. Two Carolingian phases came to light. The first, probably in the early ninth century, concerns the transept and foundation works discovered in the excavations, which revealed a polygonal apse, enveloped by a narrow corridor for circulation that led to a small rectangular eastern oratory. In the second phase, after 836 and before 858 (abandonment of Deas), the chevet was enlarged, with a deep semicircular apse, on a raised platform ; underneath was a confessional crypt with the sarcophagus of Saint Philibert and a small cruciform oratory, all of which are preserved in large part. On the periphery was built an important exterior crypt with three chapels at the east end. Radio-carbon dating, analysis of architectural terracottas, archaeomagnetic and thermoluminescent datings all confirm an attribution to the Carolingian period for the two phases.