French archaeology has not been without its share of debates, controversies, and even scandals. Some of these have led to changes in practice or interpretation, whereas others continue to be debated.
The “Mission Héliographique”
In 1851, the Commission des Monuments Historiques, directed by Prosper Merimée, instigated a project now known as the “Mission Héliographique” to document the monuments of France. The Commission proposed the use of the new medium of photography, which had been invented in the 1830s. The monuments selected to be recorded were not necessarily the most important, but rather those that were in the course of, or awaiting, restoration. Although the majority of sites to be recorded were ecclesiastical buildings, the survey was to include Gallo-Roman structures and a few prehistoric monuments. At the time, it was one of the largest photographic projects and also one of the first to be commissioned by a government agency.
The five photographers selected were all members of the Société Héliographique, considered to be the first known photographic society in the world. Edouard Baldus was chosen to document southern France, and among the Gallo-Roman monuments he photographed were the aqueduct bridge known as the Pont-du-Gard, the arch at Orange, the Maison Carrée in Nîmes, and the amphitheaters at Arles and Nîmes, discussed in chapter 3. One of the few prehistoric monuments to be recorded was the Dolmen de Bagneux in the commune of Saumur (Maine-et-Loire), photographed by Gustave le Gray and Auguste Mestral. It is not clear, however, whether all five photographers submitted their photographs to the Commission; indeed, only a handful of examples by Hippolyte Bayard, who documented the monuments of Brittany and Normandy, survive.
However, the Commission never published or exhibited the photographs, although they were discussed in the photographic press. Indeed, the photographs remained largely unknown until 1980, when Philippe Néagu, then curator of the Archives photographiques des Monuments Historiques (Historical Monuments Photographic Archives), published around one hundred negatives that had been housed in the collection. This led to the recognition and discovery of more than 180 original photographic prints, which mostly had been kept in public collections. The rediscovery in the archives of the photographs led to an exhibition in spring 2002 at the Maison européenne de la Photographie, Ville de Paris.
It is not recorded why the Commission des Monuments Historiques chose not to make the photographs accessible to the public, but rather kept them in its archives. Néagu’s publication of the negatives led to speculation in the 1980s as to why such an important group of photographs had remained unrecognized for more than a century. One suggestion is that the photographs, many of which are highly accomplished in terms of their composition and lighting, were unsuitable as a record of the poor, unrestored condition of the buildings, but rather created some of the first photographic impressions of “romantic ruins.”
As well as being of interest from an archaeological point of view, in recording buildings in their pre-restored condition, the photographs are of particular importance in the study of the history of photography, as one of the earliest examples of a collection of images made for a specific purpose. The surviving negatives from the “Mission Héliographique” are now housed in the collection of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.
Alésia and Gergovia
The locations of Alésia and Gergovia, the sites of important battles in 52 BC during in the Roman conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar, have been the subject of much debate.
Archaeologists disagree on the location of Alésia, the site of the final battle between Julius Caesar and Vercingetorix. These discussions have been parodied in the Astérix comic book story Astérix and the Chieftain’s Shield, published in 1967. The chief Abraracourcix (whose name in English is “Vitalstatistix”) says to Astérix, “What do you mean, Alésia? I don’t even know where Alésia is! Nobody knows where Alésia is!”
The excavations initiated in 1861 by the French emperor Napoleon III at Mont-Auxois, near Alise-Sainte-Reine (Côte-d’Or), which he believed could be identified as Alésia, were discussed in chapters 1 and 3. As a result of these excavations, Napoleon III issued an imperial decree in 1864 that modern-day Alise-Sainte-Reine should be identified as Alésia. The association between Alise-Sainte-Reine and Alésia was made as long ago as the ninth century AD by Heiric d’Auxerre, a monk at the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Germain d’Auxerre (Yonne). Even before Napoleon III’s decree, excavation in 1784 by Pierre Laureau, an officer in the household of the Count of Artois, revealed coins and inscriptions. The discovery of an inscription in the Gaulish language naming “Alisiia” (CIL XIII, 2880) during further excavation in 1839 on Mont-Auxois, added extra weight to its identification as Alésia.
Alternative suggestions concerning the location of Alésia have been made. As early as 1696, Louis des Ours de Mandajors claimed that Alésia was situated at Alès (Gard), although this was given little credence. Alphonse Delacroix, an architect at Besançon (Doubs), suggested in 1855 that Alésia was located at Alaise, now in the commune of Eternoz (Doubs). More recently, the association of Alésia and Alise-Sainte-Reine was challenged in the 1960s by André Berthier, who studied the text of Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War) and believed that Caesar’s description of the battle site did not match the topography of Alise-Sainte-Reine. Berthier considered around two hundred potential sites and in 1962 announced that he had found a match between the literary description of Alésia and the commune of Chaux-des-Crotenay (Jura). After Berthier’s death in 2000, his work was continued by Danielle Porte.
However, the views of Berthier and Porte have not been accepted by the majority of scholars; and, in particular, the Franco-German survey and excavations on Mont-Auxois between 1991 and 1997 support the original identification as Alésia.
Similarly, debate regards the location of Gergovia, which is recorded by Julius Caesar in his Commentarii de Bello Gallico as the site of the battle in 52 BC in which Vercingetorix successfully repulsed him. Possibilities for the site of the battle usually have been identified as three oppida of the Averni tribe: namely, Corent, Gondole, and Gergovie, all of which are around seven kilometers apart.
Corent, the indigenous settlement of forty-five hectares that is named after the nearby village and plateau, is situated on a naturally defended hilltop. However, discoveries of coins and broken amphorae during excavations conducted by a team led by John Collis of the University of Sheffield, England, and Vincent Guichard, director of the Centre Européen de Recherche Archéologique de Bibracte, indicated that the settlement was abandoned before the date of the battle of Gergovia. In addition, they observed that the topography of Corent does not correspond with Julius Caesar’s account. More recent excavations at Corent by LUERN (Laboratoire Universitaire d’Enseignement et de Recherche en archéologie Nationale), however, have indicated that some of the buildings on the site were erected in the post-conquest Gallo-Roman period, accordingly proving that Corent was not, in fact, abandoned before the battle of Gergovia.
Gondole, in the commune of Le Cendre, whose spectacular discoveries of human and horse burials in 2002 are discussed in chapter 3, also once was considered as being the site of the battle of Gergovia. In the mid-nineteenth century, it was suggested that Gondole was the site of a camp of Julius Caesar as a result of discoveries made during the construction of the railway line between Clermont-Ferrand and Issoire (both Puy-de-Dôme), although more recent research suggests that it was an oppidum. However, the topography of Gondole does not match Julius Caesar’s account of the battle site.
The officially recognized site of the battle is Gergovie, in the commune of La Roche-Blanche (Puy-de-Dôme), situated on the plateau known for many years as Gergovie. The village, known until 1865 as Merdogne, had been suggested as the site of the battle as early as 1560, and in 1755 the first archaeological excavations were conducted by La Société littéraire de Clermont-Ferrand (Puy-de-Dôme). As at Mont-Auxois, the excavations were conducted by Colonel Eugène Stoffel at the behest of the emperor Napoleon III. Stoffel believed that his excavations of 1862 had revealed two of Caesar’s camps at Gergovia, and in 1865, an imperial decree renamed the village of Merdogne as Gergovie. The topography of Gergovie corresponds to Julius Caesar’s description, but finds from the site generally were considered to be from the later first century BC, from the reign of the emperor Augustus. However, in 1995 and 1996, the University of Sheffield collaborated with ARAFA (l’Association de Recherches sur l’Age du Fer en Auvergne) on a project titled “Iron Age in the Auvergne.” The aim was to investigate whether Gergovia should be identified with the location of Napoleon III’s investigations or one of the other oppida in the locality. The finds from the excavations at Gergovie in 1996, including catapult projectiles and fragments of amphorae, are contemporary with the battle of Gergovia and support the suggestion that Gergovie should be identified as the battle site.
Access to Archaeology: Paleolithic Cave Replicas
The increasing demand from the public to view caves that were decorated during the Paleolithic period, as discussed in chapter 2, has caused severe conservation problems from the 1960s onward. The most famous of the decorated caves, at Lascaux, was opened to the public in 1948 but closed again in 1963 due to the deterioration caused by the number of visitors. By the early 1960s, visitors to Lascaux totaled some two thousand per day during the summer months with a total of about one hundred thousand per year, affecting its microenvironment.
The discovery of new mold growth in the cave resulted in its total closure in January 2008 for a period of three months. Current access is limited to one person for a few minutes per week to monitor the environmental conditions in the cave. However, the seventieth anniversary of the discovery of the cave in September 2010 was marked by a highly controversial visit by Nicolas Sarkozy, then president of France, with his wife, Carla Bruni; Fréderic Mitterand (then culture minister); and five other colleagues. The presidential party was allowed to spend thirty minutes in the cave, the result of which, as reported in the press, was that routine security checks were canceled for two weeks to compensate for their visit.
To cater to public interest, a facsimile of the cave, known as Lascaux II, was constructed in a disused quarry two hundred meters downhill from the entrance to the original cave. The concrete building of Lascaux II has been covered with earth in an attempt to blend it into the landscape. The project to build and decorate Lascaux II was begun in the early 1970s, and the replica was opened to the public in 1983. Reconstructions have been made of two of the galleries: namely, La Salle des Taureaux and Le Diverticule Axial, representing around 40 percent of the cave. It has been suggested that some elements of Lascaux II do not feel authentic and, in particular, the floor is made from black rubber. To permit a wider appreciation of the paintings from Lascaux, an exhibition, known as Lascaux III was devised and built by AFSP (Atelier des Fac-similés du Périgord). Lascaux III is a portable exhibition with a floor area of eight hundred square meters, which displays over a wall area of 120 square meters four painted scenes from Le Nef and one from Le Puits that were not included in the Lascaux II replica. The exhibition initially opened in Montignac (Dordogne) and subsequently transferred to the nearby commune of Thonac before traveling to several destinations worldwide, including the United States, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, South Korea, and Japan, returning to Europe.
The Centre International d’Art Pariétal (CIAP), more colloquially known as Lascaux IV, is a new facsimile of the cave that opened in December 2016 at the foot of the hill at Montignac where the original cave is situated (figure 5.1). One of the reasons for constructing Lascaux IV, which is designed to cater to around four hundred thousand visitors per year, were concerns regarding the location of Lascaux II. The entrance to Lascaux II is on top of the hill, close to the original cave, and any increase in visitor numbers potentially could cause damage to the original. The opening of Lascaux IV has not resulted in the closure of Lascaux II, although groups are restricted to a maximum of twenty people, who are offered an in-depth visit of an hour and a half on two tours per day. The Lascaux IV building, which is made from glass and concrete, provides eighty-five hundred square meters of visitor space its various exhibition areas linked by means of indoor and outdoor paths. It houses a full replica of the cave, together with six galleries that provide the visitor with information on the discovery of the cave, its relationship to other cave art, and interpretation of its decoration. Within the cave facsimile, the environment of the time of discovery in 1940 has been re-created: the temperature, air pressure, damp smell, and sounds. The walls of the cave were reproduced using natural materials; their decoration, which comprises six hundred animal images and four hundred signs and symbols, was produced by around fifty artists and sculptors. In contrast to Lascaux II, where only paintings were replicated, Lascaux IV also includes engravings.
Figure 5.1. Centre International d’Art Pariétal (Lascaux IV), Montignac. Paul G. Bahn
On discovery of the Grotte Chauvet-Pont d’Arc (Ardèche), a decision was made not to open the cave to the public in the interests of its preservation. In addition to the publication of images from the cave, the documentary film Cave of Forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzog was released in cinemas in 2010. A building containing a partial replica of the Grotte Chauvet-Pont d’Arc, known as the Caverne du Pont d’Arc, opened in April 2015 at Saint-Remèze (Ardèche). Rather than attempt to re-create a cave in the manner of Lascaux, the architects designed a modern circular building, clad in concrete, situated above ground (figure 5.2). The original cave was considered too extensive to replicate in full, and the designers selected what they considered to be its highlights. The limestone walls of the original cave were reproduced in concrete, with geological features such as stalagmites and stalactites made from resin. Paintings were created off-site by projecting images onto a resin background. In addition to the Caverne du Pont d’Arc, the building also includes La Galerie de l’Aurignacien, which is a museum with displays of objects, interactive displays, and a small cinema.
Figure 5.2. Caverne du Pont-d’Arc, Saint-Remèze. Paul G. Bahn
The replicas of the Lascaux and Chauvet caves, along with Altamira and Ekain in northern Spain, are the only full-sized replicas of painted caves. There are, however, in France replicas, and full-sized two-dimensional images, of individual elements of decoration. A facsimile of the sculpted frieze at Le Roc-aux-Sorciers, the most impressive sculpted frieze from the Ice Age, is displayed at the Centre d’Interpretation de la Frise Magdalénienne at Angles-sur-l’Anglin (Vienne). The Musée de la Préhistoire in Le Mas d’Azil (Ariège) has a display of reproductions of paintings and engravings in parts of the Grotte du Mas d’Azil that are not open to the public. In particular, many of the elements of the Parc pyrénéen d’art préhistorique at Tarascon-sur-Ariège (Ariège), which opened fully in 1995, were based on art from the Grotte de Niaux, discussed in chapter 2. The team who created the Parc pyrénéen d’art préhistorique, which included the prehistorian Jean Clottes, have not attempted to re-create the Grotte de Niaux by building an artificial cave set into the ground. The gallery known as the Grand Atelier includes a room the same size and proportions as the Salon Noir, decorated with a a full-scale reconstruction of the paintings, depicted in their original appearance. There is, however, no intention to present the gallery as a real cave and, in addition, not all of the areas of the Grotte de Niaux are reproduced. The aim of the Parc pyrénéen d’art préhistorique is the same as at Lascaux II, Lascaux IV, and the Caverne du Pont d’Arc: namely, to cater to public interest without damaging the original cave.
Another approach has been taken at the Grottes de Saulges Musée de Préhistoire, which opened in Saulges (Mayenne) in spring 2017, unifying collections from a group of museums in the region. Although visitors to the museum can buy a ticket “package” that includes admission to the Grotte Margot in the nearby commune of Thorigné-en-Charnie (Mayenne), which has both paintings and engravings dating between 23,000 BC and 10,000 BC, the main attraction in the museum is a virtual reconstruction of the Grotte Mayenne-Sciences. The Grotte Mayenne-Sciences, which was discovered by a caving team in 1967, has been scientifically investigated since 1999 by a team led by Romain Pigeaud. Although the cave is not open to the public, it is possible for visitors to see in virtual reality its decoration, which comprises figures, mainly of horses, in black outline as well as engravings.
La Grotte Cosquer near Marseille, discussed in chapter 2, is in a somewhat different position, as the underwater entrance to the cave has prevented any public access, and it would seem logical to construct a replica. Indeed, the city authorities of Marseille proposed such action and were given permission by the French Ministry of Culture to conduct a photogrammetric survey of the cave. A survey of part of the cave using a 3-D laser system was undertaken in 1994 by Electricité de France (EDF), using technology that transferred from maintaining EDF’s installations to recording the shapes and colors of the walls of the cave. A diver introduced a sensor into the cave, and the data collected by the sensor were then converted into a virtual textured model. Accordingly, the survey used photogrammetric and laser techniques to create a virtual copy of part of the cave, and the intention was to use the data to create a replica. The city authorities of Marseille apparently are still keen to have a facsimile of the Cosquer cave, with suggested venues being either the Villa Mediterranée or the Fort d’Entrecasteaux in the Vieux-Port of Marseille. However, in early 2017 it was announced that the former would be used to house the Parliament of the Mediterranean, and the focus has now shifted to the Fort d’Entrecasteaux. Reports in the press have mentioned the idea of re-creating a replica that would be fifty meters long, twenty meters wide, and ten meters high. However, planning is at a very early stage, and “Cosquer Two” is far from being a reality.
The public’s reception of the replica caves of Lascaux and Chauvet generally has been positive, given that visits to the original caves are no longer possible. In particular, the designers of the Lascaux IV replica have learned from criticism of the appearance of the building that houses the Caverne du Pont d’Arc by ensuring that the Centre International d’Art Pariétal was designed to blend into the hillside. Furthermore, it will become even less conspicuous in the landscape as it is concealed by vegetation. Comments have been that the size of the groups visiting the Caverne du Pont d’Arc, at up to twenty-eight people, are too large and, in addition, are at too frequent intervals. This criticism has been recognized at Lascaux IV; although the maximum group size is up to thirty-two people, tours per day are far fewer.
Export of Antiquities from France
The Paleolithic rock shelter known as the Abri du Poisson is on the right bank of the river Vézère in the valley known as the Gorge d’Enfer, close to Les Eyzies (Dordogne). The popular name of the rock shelter is derived from the sculpted relief of a fish, a meter long and originally painted red, identified as a male salmon. Although the rock shelter was found in 1892 by Paul Girod and Elie Massénat, the relief of a fish was not identified until 1912, when it was noticed on the upper part of the rock shelter by Jean Marsan (usually called Maurice) from the nearby commune of Manaurie (Dordogne). The site was classed as an ancient monument the following year, when it was excavated by Denis Peyrony. A series of holes around the fish, made in the twentieth century, are evidence of attempts to remove it. In his guidebook to Les Eyzies, published in 1928, Denis Peyrony wrote that the relief had been “sold in secret to the Germans” by the mayor of Manaurie. Peyrony reported that the relief was about to be detached and sent to Berlin when the Ministère des Beaux-Arts stopped the work. For many years, the person frequently blamed as the intermediary in the removal of the sculpture was Otto Hauser, a Swiss antiquarian, who apparently first was implicated in a 1952 publication by Henri Breuil. This view recently has been challenged, as documentary research does not link Hauser to the intended removal of the relief.
In his autobiography, published posthumously in 1944, Carl Schuchhardt, director of the department of prehistory of the Berlin Ethnology Museum (Museum für Völkerkunde), gives a very different account. Schuchhardt wrote that shortly after the discovery of the sculpted fish, he was in Les Eyzies with several German scholars. They secretly conceived a project to purchase the sculpture, remove it, and send it to Germany; and, indeed, Schuchhardt made a drawing of the fish. However, before the fish was able to be removed from the rock shelter, the site was declared an ancient monument and, accordingly, the property of the state. Therefore, Peyrony’s 1928 account, which does not name Hauser, is correct. The suggestion that Hauser may have been linked to the removal of antiquities from France is likely to have been made because he is known to have removed the Neanderthal skeleton known as Le Moustier 1 from the rock shelters at Peyzac-le-Moustier (Dordogne) and the skeleton, recently dated to the Mesolithic period, from the site of Combe Capelle in the commune of Saint-Ait-Sénieur (Dordogne).
The skeleton known as Le Moustier 1, together with the skull fragment known as Le Moustier 3, were excavated in 1908 by Otto Hauser. Le Moustier 1 was the name given to a deliberately buried fossilized skeleton of a young male, aged about eleven, that was attributed to the species Homo neanderthalensis. The skull from Le Moustier, together with another skull from the site of Combe Capelle, also found by Hauser, were sold to the Museum für Ur- und Frühgeschichte in Berlin. The skulls, together with a necklace of pierced shells that accompanied the burial at Combe Capelle, apparently were transported to the Soviet Union around 1945. In 1965, staff from the Museum für Ur- und Frühgeschichte located the skull Le Moustier 1, to which they gave the accession number Va 3858a, as well as the necklace from Combe Capelle, among art objects returned by the Soviet Union to the German Democratic Republic. As discussed in chapter 2, the skull from Combe Capelle was not located until 2001. The skeleton Le Moustier 2 was found in 1914 by Denis Peyrony. The individual, an infant aged four months or less, also was from the species Homo neanderthalensis, and his or her skeleton is now housed in the Musée National de Préhistoire at Les Eyzies (Dordogne).
The Return and Restitution of Antiquities and Cultural Property
The return and restitution of antiquities and cultural property—that is, the return of objects and other material, such as human remains—has risen in prominence over recent decades. The UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, adopted in 1970 and ratified by 129 of 195 UNESCO member states, has reinforced this trend.
However, the repatriation of objects can be complicated, as the original location or ownership may not be straightforward. A historic example involving France is a bronze sculptural group of four horses, now in St. Mark’s Basilica, Venice. Originally, they were part of a Roman monument whose location is not known. Subsequently transferred to Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), the horses were displayed in the Hippodrome until 1204, when they were plundered during the Fourth Crusade by the Venetians. The horses were displayed on St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice when the city was captured by forces of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797. They were removed from the basilica and paraded in triumph along the Champ de Mars in Paris, alongside classical sculptures taken from the Vatican and Capitoline Museums in Rome. With the defeat of Napoleon, the horses were returned to Italy in 1815 and reinstalled on the facade of St. Mark’s Basilica, only removed in the 1980s to an indoor location because of fears of damage by pollution.
The Rosetta stone, one of the most popular objects in the British Museum in London, has an interesting history. It is part of an ancient Egyptian stela that is inscribed with a decree written in Hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek, dating to 196 BC. It was found in 1799, during the campaign of Napoleon Bonaparte in Egypt, by Pierre-François Bouchard. Bouchard was an engineer and officer in the French army who was put in charge of the rebuilding of Fort Julien, a former Mamluk fortification close to el-Rashid, also known as “Rosetta,” on the Nile Delta. The text on the Rosetta stone had aroused academic interest since its discovery, as it was recognized immediately that the use of three languages in the inscription had the potential to allow the previously undeciphered hieroglyphic script to be read. The French troops in Egypt were defeated by British forces in 1801, and the Rosetta stone came into the possession of the British Crown in August of that year under the Capitulation of Alexandria, which brought the Commission des Sciences et des Arts de l’armée d’Orient, discussed in chapter 1, to an end. In 1902, King George III donated the Rosetta stone to the British Museum, where it has been on display ever since.
Indeed, the looting of works of art in wartime has an even longer attested history. The victory stela of Naram-Sin, king of Akkad in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), is now in the Musée du Louvre in Paris. Its inscription records that it celebrated the victory of Naram-Sin over the Lullubi, a people who were living in the Zagros Mountains, in around 2250 BC. However, an additional inscription, added in the twelfth century BC, indicates that it was appropriated by forces of the Elamite king Shutruk-Nahhunte, who took it to their capital in Susa, in modern-day Iran. The stela was excavated in Susa in AD 1898 by the French archaeologist Jacques de Morgan and taken to Paris for display at the Musée du Louvre.
In more recent years, the demand has increased to repatriate works of art that have been removed from their original context. An example involving France has been the return to Egypt in 2009 of five fragments of wall paintings illegally removed from a tomb on the west bank of the river Nile at Luxor. The tomb, designated TT (Theban Tomb) 15, and situated in the so-called Valley of the Nobles at Dra Abu El-Naga, was of the official Tetiky, who died around 1550 BC, in the early eighteenth dynasty. The Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities reported that the paintings were documented in the tomb in 1968 and again in 1975. Apparently they were stolen some time between 1975 and 2000, when four of the fragments were bought by the Musée du Louvre; the fifth fragment was purchased in 2003. In May 2008, a researcher from Heidelberg University recognized the fragments in the Louvre’s reserve collection as being from tomb TT15. The tomb was entered later that year, having been closed for some years as it is below a modern building. It was apparent where the painted fragments had originated, and accordingly they were returned to Egypt in late 2009.
A legal gap concerning the protection of cultural heritage of Native North American peoples outside the United States has been highlighted in the 2010s by several auctions in Paris that included objects sacred to various Native North American tribes, most notably the Hopi, which are protected within the jurisdiction of the United States. The Hopi people are recognized as an American sovereign tribal nation in northeast Arizona. In 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016, auctions were held in Paris of Native North American objects, including katsinam. Katsinam are sacred to the Hopi and are sometimes referred to as “masks,” although the Hopi do not use the term themselves. From the first sale onward, Hopi representatives had requested delays of the sales to enable research into the provenance of the objects, although this did not prove successful. An attorney for the Hopi tribe bought one katsina at each of the two sales in 2013, and the Annenberg Foundation bought twenty-four objects at the sale in December 2013, twenty-one for the Hopi and three for the San Carlos Apache. The Navajo Nation bought seven of the eight Navajo masks at the sale in December 2014. The Acoma Pueblo Nation in New Mexico and the Hoopa Valley Tribal Nation in California further protested at a sale in Paris in 2016, which also included Hopi katsinam, although in this instance, an Acoma Pueblo ceremonial shield was withdrawn from the auction. By contrast, it has been observed that other recent auctions in Paris that have included Native American objects, such as the sale of the collection of the surrealist painter André Breton, which took place in 2003, did not attract the protests seen in the 2010s. However, such protests serve to draw attention to the differences between the protection offered to North American indigenous cultural objects in North America and elsewhere.
The federation of French colonial possessions known as French Indochina was formed in 1887 from Cambodia and three Vietnamese regions, with Laos added in 1893. At this time, the art of the Khmer empire, which flourished in the northwest part of modern-day Cambodia from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, was greatly admired in France. Removal of Khmer art to France occurred even before the formation of French Indochina. Between 1866 and 1868, the French archaeologist, artist, and art historian Louis Delaporte was one of the members of the Mekong Exploration Commission. Delaporte was said to have acquired seventy pieces of Khmer sculpture and architectural elements from King Norodom, although the exact terms are unclear. The objects largely were destined for the Musée Indochinois du Trocadéro in Paris, founded in 1882, where Delaporte was curator. After Delaporte’s death in 1925, the objects were relocated to the Musée Guimet. During the early parts of the twentieth century, the temples at Angkor, the Khmer capital, saw a marked rise in visitors, many acquiring original objects. Although some of these were given or sold to museums, others remained in private hands or on the art market. As late as the 1920s, original pieces of sculpture and architecture were on sale in a pavilion in front of the temple complex of Angkor Wat by the Ecole Française d’Extrême Orient, for many decades heavily instrumental in the protection and conservation of the temples at Angkor Wat, and at the Albert Sarraut Museum in Phnom Penh, which has become the National Museum of Cambodia. Although it is clear that these sales may have been motivated to discourage vandalism of the temples, it is also apparent that the EFEO were at the same time facilitating the export of antiquities from French Indochina.
One of the greatest controversies regarding the removal of antiquities from French Indochina involved the author André Malraux, who subsequently became France’s first minister of cultural affairs in the de Gaulle government. In 1923, Malraux had an official permit to study the architecture of Khmer temples but not to remove any fragments, which he was warned was illegal. However, Malraux and his friend Louis Chevasson removed sections of a stone figure of a goddess from the Banteay Srei temple in Angkor. Malraux and Chevasson were arrested, put on trial, and convicted, and the fragments of sculpture were returned to their original location. The theft from the Banteay Srei temple may have been the catalyst for the adoption of new legislation regarding the classification, protection, and conservation of historical monuments and art objects from French Indochina, which was adopted in 1925.
Malraux, however, was involved in further scandal regarding his acquisition of Buddhist sculpture while in Afghanistan in 1930. Malraux was unwilling to commit to how and where the sculptures were found, although it is clear that they were acquired outside the official excavations of the Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan, founded in 1922. In 1931 Malraux exhibited in Paris fragments of Buddhist sculptures, mostly heads, dating from the fourth and fifth centuries AD that he had acquired in Afghanistan. Some of these subsequently were exhibited in New York, and several entered North American museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
The Grand Congloué Shipwrecks
In the early days of underwater archaeology, interpretations of shipwrecks by scholars unfamiliar with this type of site could be erroneous. Misinterpretations often occurred because archaeologists themselves did not dive, a practice that now is considered to be unprofessional. An example of misinterpretation in the 1950s in the then emerging discipline of underwater archaeology is the site at the rock of Grand Congloué, south of Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône).
The presence of a shipwreck first had been reported in 1936, when fishermen’s nets brought up Roman amphorae with their maker’s stamps. However, further investigation was not possible and had to await the development of the AquaLung by Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Emile Gagnan in the 1940s. Between 1952 and 1957 the site at Grand Congloué was excavated by Cousteau and Fernand Benoit, a noted terrestrial archaeologist who was director of historic antiquities of Provence and Corsica. Using Cousteau’s well-known ship Calypso as their base, 90 percent of the site was excavated and produced many finds. However, as Benoit did not dive, he had to rely on interviewing divers and used their verbal accounts to prepare an archaeological plan of the site. Cousteau attempted to record the site, but he was not a trained archaeologist. The excavation was resumed by Yves Girault in 1961, the same year that Benoit published a report on the excavation concluding that a single shipwreck was at Grand Congloué.
The records relating to the discoveries at Grand Congloué were reexamined in the 1980s by Luc Long at DRASSM (Le Département des recherches archéologiques subaquatique et sous-marine) in Marseille, who identified two shipwrecks on the site, indicated by two distinct periods of finds.
The earlier shipwreck, Grand Congloué 1, carried a cargo of four hundred Greco-Roman amphorae, with around thirty from Greece. There were seven thousand pieces of Italian “Campanian A” black-slipped fine ware. Stamps on Rhodian amphorae date the cargo between 210 and 180 BC. The second shipwreck, Grand Congloué 2, dated from about 100 BC, around one hundred years later than Wreck One. It carried more than one thousand Dressel 1A type wine amphorae from the villa at Settefinestre, close to Cosa in central Italy, which is estimated to have produced more than four thousand amphorae of wine per year. The wine from Settefinestre was carried in amphorae stamped with SES, indicating the family of P. Sestius, who owned land near Cosa. Long also attributed other finds to this wreck, namely, later Campanian black-slipped fine ware, lamps, and coarse ware. The finds from the shipwrecks at Grand Congloué are in the collection of the Musée des Docks Romains in Marseille, on the site of a Roman commercial warehouse.
The Theft of the “Treasure” of King Childeric I
In 1653, a chance find was made during building work near the Church of Saint-Brice, Tournai, in modern-day Belgium, of the tomb of the Frankish ruler Childeric I, father of Clovis I, the founder of the Merovingian dynasty. The occupant of the tomb was identified as Childeric, who died in either AD 481 or 482, by an inscription on a ring in the burial. Childeric had been buried with rich grave goods, the most novel feature being around three hundred insects, usually identified as bees, made of gold with garnet cloisonné decoration, perhaps used to decorate clothing. The grave goods in the tomb were recorded by Jean-Jacques Chifflet and published in 1655. The grave goods, today commonly described as “treasure,” initially were sent to the Habsburg court in Vienna, as Tournai was part of the Habsburg Empire. In 1665 they were given to King Louis XIV of France and housed in the Bibliothèque Royale (Royal Library), which later became the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (National Library of France). The “treasure” apparently was greatly admired by Napoleon Bonaparte, who was crowned emperor on 2 December 1804 wearing a cloak decorated with golden bees, perhaps using this motif in the same manner as Childeric, and emphasizing a wish to associate himself with the Merovingian king.
On the night of 5 to 6 November 1831, thieves entered the Bibliothèque Nationale, stealing, among other objects, the “treasure” from the tomb of Childeric. Some of the objects apparently were hidden by the thieves in the river Seine and were recovered the following year. Comparison with Chifflet’s drawings reveals that only a fraction of the objects were recovered. These include the fittings from a sword, made from gold with cloisonné decoration (figure 5.3), and two of the golden bees. The retrieved items were returned to display at the Cabinet des Médailles at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, where they reside to the present day.
Figure 5.3. Fittings of the sword of Childeric I. Alamy
The Destruction of Archaeological Sites in France
Underwater Sites
Although the commercial development of the AquaLung in the 1940s enabled the development of the discipline of underwater archaeology, the ability to explore underwater encouraged a large number of amateur divers, not all of whom respected archaeological sites.
One of the earliest examples was the wreck of the Roman vessel known as the “Titan,” discovered off the l’Ile du Levant, one of the Iles d’Hyères (Var). The wreck initially was surveyed in 1954, and it is believed that the publicity generated by the publication of color photographs of the wreck on the seabed led to its subsequent looting before it could be excavated by Philippe Tailliez in 1957 and 1958. Similarly, in 1955 when a wreck that sank off Cap d’Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes) in the sixth century BC was excavated, it was found to have been partially looted by amateur divers. Looting still was prevalent even in the 1970s; the small wreck found off the coast at Dattier, west of Cap Cavalaire (Var), in 1971 was found already to have been looted, although fifteen amphorae were noted. Unfortunately, the majority of these were themselves looted during the course of excavation before they could be raised to the surface.
Destruction and Damage to Neolithic Sites in Brittany
The Neolithic monuments found in Brittany and elsewhere are very visible in the landscape, which has resulted in the destruction and damage of some of the monuments. Indeed, it is said that the earliest known excavation in France, of the dolmen tomb at Cocherel (Eure), discussed in chapter 1, had resulted from the tomb being stripped for building stone. Damage to megalithic monuments in the early nineteenth century was noted by Prosper Merimée when he visited Brittany in the course of his time as Inspecteur général des monuments historiques, observing that monuments were being destroyed through reuse of their stone for road and bridge building.
However, destruction of important megalithic monuments still was occurring in the middle of the twentieth century, most notably the cairns at Barnenez in the commune of Plouézoc’h (Finistère), memorably described by André Malraux when French minister of culture as the “Parthénon mégalithique” (megalithic Parthenon). Ancient remains had been noted at Barnenez as long ago as 1807 and again in 1850. The two monuments, referred to as Barnenez North and Barnenez South, Kerdi Bihan and Kerdi Bras, respectively, in the Breton language, were around one hundred meters apart. Privately owned until the mid-1950s, they were exploited as a stone quarry by their owner, a public works contractor. Subsequent investigation of the remains of Barnenez North, which was destroyed in November 1954, indicates that it was between twenty-five and thirty meters long. The archaeologist Pierre-Roland Giot found the remains of a passage grave consisting of a roofed passage and a circular chamber with a large capstone. On the site of the chamber, Giot found sherds of Neolithic pottery and a few stone tools.
The quarrying of Barnenez South began in spring 1955 and was observed by the writer and journalist Francis Gourvil, who alerted Pierre-Roland Giot. Giot contacted the authorities, who instructed the quarrying to cease. Although four chambers were partially destroyed, with the contractors cutting a section through Chambers B and C, around 75 percent of the monument was saved, being classed in 1956 as an ancient monument. The site was excavated by Giot, Jean L’Helgouac’h, and Jacques Briard, followed by consolidation and restoration work that continued until 1968. They discovered that the monument consisted of two cairns, built in two consecutive phases, containing a total of eleven chambers approached by irregular passages, significant because of the variety of their construction, set in a row opening along the southern side of the cairns. The initial cairn, constructed around 4500 BC, was around thirty-five meters long and twenty-five meters wide and contained five chambers. Some of the stones approaching the chambers were decorated with engravings and paintings, and the recent research on this aspect is discussed in chapter 6. Around three hundred years after its construction, the original cairn was extended by a further forty meters to include six further chambers.
Destruction of Neolithic monuments is not limited to damage to the fabric of the structure. Researchers studying engravings and paintings in Neolithic tombs on Breton sites noted that some of the engravings at the dolmen tomb of Mané Kerioned in the commune of Carnac and the passage grave of Mané Lud in the commune of Locmariaquer (both Morbihan) had been damaged by the addition of modern painting, infilling of the engravings, and reworking of some of the designs.
The “Rodez Scandal”
In January 1997, French rescue archaeologists took strike action to protest at the destruction of Iron Age, Gallo-Roman, and medieval remains at a construction site in the town of Rodez (Aveyron). The protest was the result of the news that the then French prime minister, Alain Juppé, had authorized continuing construction despite the significant archaeological discoveries. It was claimed by the archaeologists that Juppé violated historic preservation codes and called for tougher laws. The scandal led to the establishment of a working party to consider a law on preventative archaeology and a new body to take over the responsibilities of AFAN (l’Association pour les fouilles archéologiques nationales), which resulted in the establishment of Inrap (Institut national de recherches archéologiques préventives) in 2002.
Fakes and Forgeries
The Crystal Skull in Paris
The collections of the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris include a “crystal skull,” a piece of quartz carved in the shape of a human skull. It is smaller than life size, measuring eleven centimeters high but weighing 2.75 kilos, and once was believed to have been of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican origin, most likely Aztec.
The skull was presented in 1878 to the newly founded Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro in Paris by the French traveler and collector Alphonse Pinart. The skull had been sold to Pinart by Eugène Boban, a French collector and antiquities dealer. Boban had lived in Mexico City from the 1860s, being associated with the Commission scientifique de Mexique of 1864 to 1867, sent to Mexico by Napoleon III during the French intervention in Mexico at this time. Indeed, Boban loaned to the Commission much of his pre-Columbian collection for exhibition in Paris from 1867 to 1868. Boban subsequently exhibited Mexican objects, including the crystal skull, at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878, where it was purchased, along with other artifacts, by Pinart.
Archival research shows that Eugène Boban owned both the crystal skull now in the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac and a similar skull in the collections of the British Museum in London, as well as being involved in the sale of three others. The British Museum skull apparently was acquired by Boban between 1878 and 1881, when he was based in Paris. In 1885 he offered it to the Museo Nacional de México, which rejected it as being a modern European object. Despite this, Boban sold the skull to Tiffany & Co., the New York jewelers, from whom the British Museum acquired it in 1897.
The crystal skulls in the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac and the British Museum, as well as another in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., were subject to analysis in the 1990s and 2000s, and all revealed the use of modern tools. It was concluded that the skulls in Paris and London likely were made in the nineteenth century, and the larger skull in Washington, D.C., made as late as the 1950s.
Paleolithic Portable Art: Real or Fake?
The discovery of Paleolithic portable art in the nineteenth century perhaps inevitably led to the copying of objects and presenting them as genuine. The objects that have led to the greatest suspicion are “galets peints” (“Azilian pebbles”) and representations of females.
The objects popularly called “galets peints” (“Azilian pebbles”) are small, flat pieces of stone decorated with simple dots and lines, probably with a finger or brush, using a pigment made from red ochre. The pebbles date from between 9000 BC to 7500 BC, the end of the Upper Paleolithic period in Western Europe. The name is derived from the Grotte du Mas d’Azil (Ariège), discussed in chapter 2, where they first were identified by Edouard Piette, who excavated the cave between 1887 and 1897.
Edouard Piette (1827–1906) trained as a lawyer and soon after became interested in geology and archaeology, financing several excavations. In 1869, Piette and Edouard Fleury excavated the cemetery known as Les Dessus de Prugny in the commune of Chassemy (Aisne), where they discovered both Neolithic and Early Iron Age burials, including a chariot burial. Piette’s interest grew as the result of visits to several caves, including La Grotte de l’Eléphant in the commune of Gourdan-Polignan (Haute-Garonne), which he excavated between 1871 and 1875. In addition, from 1873 Piette worked with Emile Cartailhac and Eugène Trutat, curator of the Muséum d’histoire naturelle in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne), at the Grotte de Lortet (Hautes-Pyrénées) and La Grotte d’Espalungue in the commune of Arudy (Pyrénées-Atlantiques). In 1880, during construction of the railway station at Eauze (Gers), where Piette served as a justice of the peace between 1879 and 1881, he discovered several inscriptions on stone from the Gallo-Roman site of Elusa. The excavations that Piette financed often were conducted in his absence, as at the Grotte du Mas d’Azil (Ariège) and the Grotte du Pape at Brassempouy (Landes). Piette donated his collection of antiquities to the Musée d’Archéologie nationale in 1902, on condition that it was displayed according to his instructions in a room named after him.
Piette announced the discovery of the “galets peints” in the late 1880s, a time when the date of Paleolithic cave paintings had not been established. One of the reasons for this was a common belief that pigment could not have survived on cave walls for so long, so, similarly, pigment could not have survived on pebbles. Although Piette’s claims initially were refuted by many archaeologists, Marcellin Boule and Emile Cartailhac, both noted prehistorians, found painted pebbles in archaeological contexts, and by the end of the nineteenth century many “Azilian pebbles” were identified in museum collections.
The majority of the pebbles from Le Mas d’Azil are between 30 and 130 millimeters long, up to 60 millimeters wide, and between 3 millimeters and 25 millimeters thick. The majority are blue-grey schist, although a few are limestone or quartzite. The decoration, which sometimes is on both sides, is red ochre; the usual motifs are dots, lines, and borders, occasionally chevrons or crosses. Most are painted, although a few are engraved. The French researcher Claude Couraud’s study of the pebbles identified sixteen different signs, used in forty-one combinations. In addition, certain numerical groupings of signs were preferred, indicating that the decoration probably signified a type of notation.
Although this type of painted pebble has been found at several sites in Western Europe, it has been estimated that more than 70 percent from the total of around two thousand known examples are from Le Mas d’Azil. A handful of sites in Spain and Switzerland, together with around thirty French sites, have produced painted pebbles, most notably at l’Abri de Rochedane, in the commune of Villars-sous-Dampjoux (Doubs). Although the site first was identified in 1877, followed by subsequent sporadic investigations, more excavations were conducted by André Thévenin between 1966 and 1976. The site has produced 77 engraved and 122 painted pebbles, most of which were decorated with transverse stripes.
However, the authenticity of some of the pebbles first was challenged by Adrien de Mortillet, partly caused by Piette’s direction of the excavations at Le Mas d’Azil. Piette was known to have been absent frequently from the excavations he directed, leaving assistants in charge, and the suspicions were raised that some pebbles were painted by unsupervised workers who were paid for each individual find they made. It is apparent, however, that most Azilian pebbles are authentic and, indeed, spoil heaps from Piette’s excavations were re-excavated to find any pebbles missed in the original excavation. Nevertheless, a willingness by collectors to pay high prices for painted pebbles undoubtedly led to a market for fake as well as genuine objects, bought by museums and collectors both in France and overseas, to the extent that there was a major trade in Azilian pebbles, both ancient and modern, by the early decades of the twentieth century.
Claude Couraud devised a methodology to identify both authentic and fake objects. This was aided by the knowledge that some fake Azilian pebbles had been kept by Henri Breuil at the Institut de Paléontologie Humaine in Paris alongside authentic examples. Couraud observed that pebbles painted in the Paleolithic period can be identified by a calcite formation on the painted surface. In addition, the coloring of many of the fake pebbles is not natural ochre and has been made using a modern colored pencil rather than a finger or brush. In addition, given that those who painted pebbles in the past would have had an ample supply of intact pebbles, any found with pigment on a fracture almost certainly are fake.
The authenticity of the carved head of a female made of ivory and known as the Dame de Brassempouy, or Dame à la capuche, discussed in chapter 2, has been questioned. The object, which has some very unusual features, has no real provenance. It was found in 1894 at a site where workers were rewarded for individual discoveries and, as at La Grotte du Mas d’Azil, frequently were left unsupervised by Edouard Piette. Furthermore, Piette recorded that he found large quantities of unworked fossilized ivory. As the material from which the Dame de Brassempouy is made undoubtedly is ancient, whether it was carved in ancient or modern times is difficult to establish.
Another female image, the “Venus” from the Abri Pataud in Les Eyzies (Dordogne), has raised questions regarding its authenticity. The rock shelter first was excavated in the 1950s and 1960s by a team led by Hallam L Movius of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, in collaboration with the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris. The “Venus,” a figure around twenty centimeters tall, is carved in relief on a piece of limestone. The carving, which cannot be dated, was discovered in 1958 by a student working on-site on the day after a violent thunderstorm. Doubts arose partly due to the circumstances of discovery, and rumors arose that it was planted on-site as a student prank. This was contested by Movius, who believed the confusion had been between the “real” Venus and another figure that, indeed, had been a student prank.
Glozel
One of the greatest and most enduring puzzles in French archaeology concerns the mystery of objects found close to the small village of Glozel in the commune of Ferrières-sur-Sichon (Allier), at the foot of the Auvergne mountains. The circumstances of the discovery of these objects and their date proved controversial for half a century following their discovery in the 1920s.
The objects were from a field owned by a farming family named Fradin. The field was said to have contained a tomb, found during clearance in 1924, although the structure, apparently a paved area with heavily vitrified walls, was destroyed.
The following year, Antonin Morlet, a doctor and amateur archaeologist from nearby Vichy, visited Glozel and offered to pay the Fradins for any finds made. The field, by now known as the “Champ des Morts,” apparently produced a massive quantity of finds, which fell into three main categories: namely, carved bone objects, very well preserved pottery, and bricks or tablets inscribed with an unknown script. Morlet claimed that finds from the site were evidence of the beginning of the Neolithic period in France.
Morlet’s claims were supported by the eminent French archaeologist Salomon Reinach. This not only gave credibility to the authenticity of the finds from Glozel, but led to the site becoming a tourist attraction. However, more scepticism came from the United Kingdom, and in an article published in 1927, O. G. S. Crawford stated that he believed that most of the Glozel finds were forgeries. Despite this, excavations continued at the site, and more than three thousand objects were recovered from 1924 until 1930, although no archaeological features were found.
In 1927, the International Anthropological Congress sent a team to Glozel to visit the site and see the finds, which they determined to be modern. Pottery was removed for further study by the French police, who concluded that the pottery was modern, as it could not otherwise have survived in such a good condition. Their report of 1928 stated that the excavation at Glozel had been disturbed and the sole archaeological find, an inscribed tablet, was discovered below freshly dug soil. Reinach initiated another investigation with a separate study team known as the Comité des Etudes (figure 5.4). In 1928 this team concluded that the site was early Neolithic in date with no later material. Despite this, Emile Fradin, aged seventeen when the field first was dug, was indicted for fraud, although the charge was overturned in 1931.
Figure 5.4. Excavations at Glozel by the Comité des Etudes, 13 April 1928. Alamy
By the 1930s, most archaeologists believed that Glozel was a fraud, the consensus expressed in an article published by the French archaeologist André Vayson de Pradenne in 1930. Vayson de Pradenne reported that when he was allowed to dig on the site at Glozel in the company of Fradin, an inscribed tablet was found, but he was sure that the ground in which it was found had been disturbed. When Vayson de Pradenne returned to dig alone, in undisturbed ground, he found nothing.
Accordingly, Glozel generally was forgotten until 1974 when Emile Fradin announced in the magazine Paris Match that all of the finds from Glozel were authentic. A few objects from Glozel had been tested using the then new, albeit well-accepted, scientific method of thermoluminescence, and the results indicated that the last firing of the ceramics was about two thousand years before. Independent testing in Denmark and at the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland produced very similar results. The conclusion was that at least some of the objects from Glozel were ancient. However, the observation was made that the finds from Glozel did not appear to include Gallo-Roman artifacts, which would be expected given the thermoluminescence dates, casting doubts on Fradin’s claim.
Further thermoluminescence testing was undertaken in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The results of the testing in 1979 fell into three main chronological groups: namely, Iron Age/Gallo-Roman (about 300 BC to AD 300), medieval (thirteenth century), and more recent. The thermoluminescence tests in 1983 produced very similar results (fourth century BC to the medieval period); in addition, carbon-14 testing of bone fragments suggested dates between the thirteenth and twentieth centuries. Further carbon-14 testing in 1984 revealed more objects to be medieval in date (charcoal from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, and an ivory ring fragment from the fifteenth century), although a human femur was dated to the fifth century AD.
A reassessment of the site was made in the 1990s, and further thermoluminescence testing showed that although many of the ceramics were recent, others were fired around two thousand years ago. Further, the engravings on the stone tablets were made with steel tools and, accordingly, clearly were a modern addition. The bones almost certainly did not come from the site. Furthermore, the description of the “tomb” as a paved area with vitrified brick walls suggests it may have been a medieval glassmaking furnace.
The consensus is that the discoveries from Glozel were entirely fraudulent, where archaeological material may have been deliberately planted on a site that did not exist in antiquity, even though some of the material apparently is ancient. Despite the controversy, with the view expressed as far back as the 1920s that the objects from Glozel were intended to deceive, the small site museum in Glozel that displays the finds from the “Champ des Morts” is supported by the regional archaeological service. The “Champ des Morts” can also be visited, signposted from the village, although it is not certain whether the continued interest is as an archaeological site or as the scene of a notorious fraud.
It seems apparent that some of the debates, controversies, and scandals involving archaeology in France have had a positive effect on archaeological practices. However, it is clear that debates, such as the replication of archaeological sites, are set to continue for many years.