The rock-cut funerary area in the secondary settlement of Ugium (Saint-Blaise, Saint-Mitre-les-Remparts, 13920, France), current state of research—abridged version

1Overlooking a prime geographical area in Basse-Provence, between the sea and a region of lakes, Saint-Blaise has been the site of successive and discontinuous occupations between the Neolithic and the modern age. Although we have, in the course of our work, been able to investigate the occupation dynamics of this secondary town and its place in the Mediterranean context of hill-top settlements, the associated funerary area has never been the subject of in-depth study. Nevertheless, it is the largest group of Late Antique rock-cut graves identified to date in the South of France. In this article, we present the results of an initial inventory of the visible structures as well as a topography of this funerary area, both based on an archaeological survey. This study, which is preliminary to a possible future anthropobiological excavation campaign, allows us to investigate the organization of the area, which contains at least 430 tombs dating from the 5th to the 7th century CE.

2Between 1938 and 1954, 132 tombs were cleared but only a few were described. These scarce observations constitute the sole first-hand information about the tombs in the absence of further investigations. They provide details about how the pits were dug into the limestone substrate, any filling of the structure after inhumation, the position of the deceased, the number of inhumations found in a single cavity, and the type of grave goods discovered.

3All the Late Antique tombs discovered in Saint-Blaise are extra muros, distributed in more or less compact groups along the thoroughfares and over an area of 14 ha. The types of tombs found are as follows: parallelepipedal or trapezoidal tombs, either simple or with internal features. The latter take the form of a cushion or a notch to house the head. The pits were mostly closed by a cover formed of limestone slabs laid end to end. The distribution of the tombs, which is consistent with the natural topography of the plateau, suggests a clear delimitation between funerary areas, dictated by the position of sharp breaks in the slope. Contrary to what has always been described for Saint-Blaise, it is likely that this funerary area was not exclusively rock-cut, but also included tombs covered by tiles or directly in the ground.