Archaeologists excavating a seven-hectare site in central France have uncovered evidence of human activity spanning some 12,000 years, including prehistoric hunting camps, Bronze Age settlements and a fortified community dating to the Carolingian period.
The discoveries have been made at Saint-Laurent-Nouan, in the Loir-et-Cher department, where a team from France’s National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) is carrying out excavations ahead of quarrying operations.
The extensive site preserves evidence of repeated occupation stretching from the end of the Palaeolithic through the Bronze and Iron Ages and into the Middle Ages, suggesting the area remained attractive to successive communities for thousands of years.
The excavation will be opened to the public for European Heritage Days on Saturday, 19 September.
12,000-year-old hunting camps
Among the earliest discoveries are traces of hunter-gatherers who occupied the landscape around 12,000 years ago, towards the end of the Palaeolithic period.
The finds build on several years of archaeological research around nearby Muides-sur-Loire, where other sites from the same period have previously been discovered.
Situated about four kilometres from the left bank of the Loire, the Saint-Laurent-Nouan site is giving archaeologists an unusually broad view of how these prehistoric communities organised their settlements.
Worked flint artefacts survived within sandy depressions that provided favourable conditions for their preservation. Archaeologists have identified three separate occupation zones within these areas, which are believed to represent small hunting camps associated with the Laborian culture of the Late Palaeolithic.
The location would have offered significant advantages to mobile groups of hunter-gatherers.
Nearby streams provided access to water, while flint outcrops along the Loire offered high-quality stone for toolmaking. The prehistoric occupants appear to have exploited these resources to manufacture large blades.
To produce them, carefully prepared pieces of flint were shaped and knapped using soft stone hammers, leaving behind evidence of the technological skills practised by the groups using the camps.
Thousands of years later, the same landscape became home to farming communities.
Archaeologists have uncovered three protohistoric settlements dating to the Bronze and Iron Ages. Located approximately 100 to 150 metres apart, they appear to have consisted of relatively small domestic units rather than densely organised villages.
The best understood so far dates to the Late Bronze Age, between approximately 1150 and 1000 BC.
This settlement contains evidence for three or four buildings, although archaeologists have yet to determine their precise functions. A cluster of features associated with cooking and storage has also been identified, alongside scattered pits and a silo used for short-term food storage.
The silo's location close to the probable dwelling area provides another indication of how domestic and agricultural activities were organised within the settlement.
Artefacts recovered during the excavation offer a more intimate picture of everyday life.
They include ceramic vessels used in the household, circular objects known as torus, fragments of firedogs associated with hearths and several worked stone artefacts.
Together, the structures and objects point towards an agro-pastoral community whose inhabitants combined farming and livestock raising with domestic food preparation and storage.
Fortified settlement from the Carolingian era
The most recent major occupation discovered at Saint-Laurent-Nouan dates from the Carolingian period, during the ninth and tenth centuries AD.
Located in the south-eastern part of the excavation, the medieval settlement was surrounded by a substantial rectangular enclosure measuring 88 metres long and approximately 58 metres wide.
Archaeologists have identified 123 postholes marking the line of a wooden palisade around an enclosed area of roughly 5,000 square metres.
The fortification suggests that controlling access to the settlement was important to its inhabitants, although further investigation will be required to establish precisely why the enclosure was constructed.
The interior was not used uniformly. Around 90 per cent of the archaeological remains identified so far are concentrated in the eastern third of the enclosure, while the western section appears to have been considerably less developed.
Numerous pits have been uncovered inside. Some were used to store plant-based foods, including cereals and legumes, while others may have been connected with craft or production activities.
Rows of postholes also reveal that buildings once stood within the enclosure, although archaeologists have not yet reconstructed their complete layouts.
Investigation of the medieval settlement is still at an early stage, and archaeologists expect further excavation and analysis of the artefacts to provide a clearer picture of the community that occupied the site during the final centuries of the Carolingian era.
Taken together, the discoveries show that Saint-Laurent-Nouan repeatedly attracted people across dramatically different periods of history.
For Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers, the attraction may have been water and readily available high-quality flint. By the Bronze Age, the landscape supported farming communities with permanent buildings and food-storage facilities. Thousands of years later, a medieval population returned to the same area and constructed a large palisaded settlement.
The result is an archaeological landscape preserving traces of human activity across roughly 12 millennia — from some of the region's last Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers to communities living in medieval France.
Header Image Credit : Hamid Azmoun, Inrap
Sources : Inrap