Graves of Sainte-Colombe-sur-Seine

The Graves of Sainte-Colombe-sur-Seine are several burial mounds dating from the 6th century BC, located near the town of Sainte-Colombe-sur-Seine in the Côte-d'Or department in eastern France.

Etruscan bronze lebes (cauldron) from La Garenne

Description

The burials are associated with the Iron Age Hallstatt culture. In the 19th century they were excavated at the request of Napoleon III, revealing elite wagon burials containing gold jewellery and prestigious imported artefacts. The first to be excavated, located at La Garenne, provided a magnificent bronze lebes of Etruscan origin,[1][2] which is now displayed in the Musée du Pays Châtillonnais in Châtillon-sur-Seine. In another, at La Butte, gold bracelets and earrings were discovered in the grave of a woman who had been laid to rest on a luxurious iron-clad funerary wagon.[3] These gold items are now kept at the National Archeological Museum in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.[4]

In the middle of the 20th century René Joffroy (1958) postulated that the elites buried under the tumuli of La Butte and La Garenne had Mont Lassois as their place of residence. However, geomagnetic surveys carried out in 2015 revealed the presence of several large buildings in the vicinity of the Sainte-Colombe burial mounds, apparently belonging to a single architectural complex, suggesting that elites may have also lived nearby.[5]

  • Gold bracelets, 6th century BC
    Gold bracelets, 6th century BC
  • Gold earrings, 6th century BC
    Gold earrings, 6th century BC

See also

References
  1. Chaume, Bruno (2001). Vix et son territoire à l’Age du fer. ISBN 2-907303-47-3.
  2. Joffroy, René (1960). "Le bassin et le trépied de Sainte-Colombe (Côte-d'Or)". Monuments et mémoires de la Fondation Eugène Piot.
  3. Olivier, Laurent (2018). "Early Iron Age gold jewellery: 150 years of discoveries in France". Early Iron Age Gold in Celtic Europe; Society, Technology and Archaeometry. pp. 11–42. ISBN 978-3-89646-876-5.
  4. Musée d'Archéologie Nationale – Sépulture à Char Féminine
  5. Chaume, Bruno; Ballmer, Ariane; Della Casa, Philippe; Nieszery, Norbert; Pertlwieser, Thomas; Reinhard, Walter; Schäppi, Katharina; Urban, Otto; Winkler, Alexandra (July 2021). "Entre l'État et la chefferie simple: le complexe aristocratique de Vix/le mont Lassois". Vix et le phénomène princier. ISBN 978-2-35613-360-1.
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