Le plateau de Mondeville (Calvados)
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11 General presentation of the sites
2In the late 1980s, a vast manufacturing and commercial estate was developed on the south-east outskirts of Caen in Normandy, presenting an idéal opportunity to explore the successive occupations of the Mondeville plateau on a single, almost continuons 200-hectare site. This was an unprecedented prospect that prompted State archeologists from the Regional Archeology Department and others from the National Institute for Préventive Archeology (Inrap, formerly Afan) and the Calvados General Council, to pool their resources in a major "préventive archeology" campaign. As a result, the industrial estate, as a unique open air laboratory, was explored for almost a decade by several dozen archeologists working in three zones, each corresponding to a separate property development. These were the 110-hectare Mondeville Sud industrial estate, located in Grentheville and Mondeville, the 60- hectare L’Étoile Urban Development Zone, again in Mondeville and the 28-hectare MIR Urban Development Zone in Mondeville and Giberville. On the ground, every period was represented, from prehistoric to medieval times. In the présent Work, however, only the oldest sites receive monographie analysis, from the Haut Saint Martin Danubian house, to Mondeville’s Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age sites.
32 The Danubian house of Haut Saint-Martin (Mondeville)
4Long considered to be the westernmost Danubian house in France, Valérie Renault’s excavation of the house at Haut Saint-Martin, despite a degree of levelling in the sub-soil, enabled her to carry out a complete analysis of its architecture. Orignally, the building was 29 métrés long and 4 mettes 50 wide and raised on load-bearing posts. The adjacent quarry pits where the alluvial deposits used to build the walls were obtained delivered up large numbers of knapped flints, as well as ceramics, schist bracelets and hardstone artefacts. These artefacts helped date the site to the early Neolithic and more precisely to the time of the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain culture (ASP facies).
53 Occupation of the South Industrial Estate (Mondeville, Grentheville) during the Middle Neolithic II
6During a séries of excavations carried out on a Bronze Age site and a medieval village site, six silo pits and an extraction pit were discovered by the Antoine Chancerel team. The abondant archeological material recovered dated from the Middle Neolithic II. This is the first time that the material culture of this period has been identified in Lower Normandy in a habitat environment. Until now, it had only been identified in a funerary environment – in the cairns on the plain of Caen. The ceramic artefacts, in particulier, seem related to a regional facies with significant Amorican stylistic elements located in a complex related to Early Northern Chassean culture of the Paris Basin. Dating techniques situate the complex in the last third of the fifth millennium BCE.
74 A Late Neolithic midden with faunal deposits at L'Étoile (Mondeville)
8During excavations of a Bronze Age enclosure on the l’Étoile site in Mondeville. excavated by Chris-Cécile Besnard-Vauterin, a mysterious pit dated to the Late Neolithic (ie, the end of the fourth millennium BCE) was unearthed. Its originality lies in the fact that it was found to contain the skeleton of a fawn, associated with a fragment of marten which was in turn placed on the skeleton of a calf and the bones of a human foetus. This curious "grave" is to date unique in archeological literature.
95 The Late Neolithic/Early Bronze age enclosure at the Mondeville MIR
10The period between the very end of the Neolithic and the start of the Bronze Age was virtually unknown in Lower Normandy. The discovery, on the site chosen for the future Mondeville Régional Market (MIR), of an enclosure belonging to this "chrono-cultural" phase, offered the team of archeologists led by Damien Leroy a magnificent opportunity to document its main structures and artefacts. The more or less trapezoid enclosure measuring 45m x 35m comprises two pits enclosing an area of 1,575 m2. The many artefacts collected in the infilling of the structures comprise domestic, ceramic, lithic and bone artefacts attributable to the early bell-shaped cup culture, ie, the middle of the third millennium BCE.
116 The Middle Bronze Age enclosure at L'Étoile (Mondeville)
12The Normandy Bronze Age has been known since the nineteenth century for its métal artefacts and its celebrated Norman palstave axes that testify to considerable vitality in this région in the Middle Bronze Age. Yet until the excavations on the Mondeville plateau, no habitat from this period had been identified. The first enclosure studied is located on the l’Étoile site at Mondeville and was excavated by Chris-Cécile Besnard-Vauterin. The enclosure is curvilinear with a 7 metre 50 break on one side, enclosing an area of around 4,000 m2. A lot of material dating from the end of the Middle Bronze Age and start of the Late Bronze Age I (ie, the third quarter of the second millennium BCE) was found in ditches inside the enclosure. A study of the ceramic artefacts relates the site to cultural groups found in Southern England, and more particularly to Deverel-Rimbury culture.
137 Middle Bronze Age double enclosure on the South Industrial Estate (Mondeville, Grentheville)
14A second Middle Bronze Age site is located on the southern industrial estate on the territories of Mondeville and Grentheville and was excavated by Antoine Chancerel and Guy San-Juan. This time it concerns two adjacent enclosures which it was not possible to uncover totally. The first enclosure, to the north, is almost ovalin shape and is the older of the two. It measures 60x45 metres for a total surface area of 2,550 m2. The second enclosure abuts onto the south side of the first. This is trapezoid in shape, measuring 70x40 metres, for a surface area of 4,500 m2. The artefacts found here comprise English-style ceramics (Deverel-Rimbury culture), bone remains and bronze artefacts such as a palstave axe, a spearhead and a pin). The complex is very consistent and dates to a period between the fourteenth and eleventh centuries BCE.
158 Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age structures at La Delle Saint-Martin (Mondeville)
16The remains presented were discovered during excavations of a habitat that was occupied from the Protohistorical period until the twelfth century CE and was excavated by Claude Lorren. A first complex comprises a small bowl-shaped pit which contained two small terracotta spindle whorls, a few knapped flints and miscellaneous pottery shards. Some 140 mètres to the north west, the exploratory trenches unearthed a small bowl-shaped fi replace containing a series of pottery shards belonging to two pots. The suggested dating for these finds is Late Bronze Age or Early Iron Age.
179 A Late Bronze / Early Iron Age pit at Haut Saint-Martin (Mondeville)
18Extensive grading of an area of 60,000 m2 on all lots at Haut Saint-Martin and La Delle Saint-Martin allowed researchers to note numerous structures attesting to virtually unbroken occupation of the site from protohistorical to medieval times. Among these was a single pit dated to the Late Bronze/Early Iron Age, excavated by Valérie Renault. The contents comprised a number of pottery shards corresponding to three separate attributable pots and a small collection of faunal bones.
1910 Summery
20At the end of these monographic presentations, it is tempting to try and draw up an overall assessment and to place each site in a historical perspective. In the Neolithic period the isolated nature of the structures excavated on the Mondeville plateau or their dispersion are not conducive to spatial analysis. However, we have considerably more data for the Protohistorical period. These point to a sufficiently coherent environment for a number of new avenues to explore concerning the notions of territory and land use – an extremely rare situation.
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