Au royaume de Carnac (Morbihan) au milieu du Ve millénaire : les haches polies en fibrolite ibérique

Pétrequin, P; Pétrequin, A.-M.; Cassen, S; Costa, E; Buthod-Ruffier, D; Errera, M.; C, Lepère; Mabo, M.; Prodéo, F; Sheridan, J A

Au royaume de Carnac (Morbihan) au milieu du Ve millénaire : les haches polies en fibrolite ibérique

Download

Name

PETREQUIN.pdf

Description

visibility:open

Size

3.96 MB

Format

Adobe PDF

Checksum (CRC64NVME)

oDtdoN3KwU8=

Resource type

Journal article

Creator (person)

Pétrequin, P

Pétrequin, A.-M.

Cassen, S

Costa, E

Buthod-Ruffier, D

Errera, M.

C, Lepère

Mabo, M.

Prodéo, F

Sheridan, J A

ORCID

Date published

2025

Abstract

On the Morbihan coast, three gigantic mounds each covered a single chamber, made to accommodate a person accompanied by a very rich grave assemblage. This gave rise to the hypothesis that, between 4600 and 4300 BC, the society in the Carnac area was based on a system of religious beliefs that supported an elite dominated by a ‘god-king’. Mané er Hroà«ck at Locmariaquer is the oldest, and most richly-equipped of these Carnac monuments, containing 12 large polished axeheads and an armring of jade, a long axehead of serpentinite, 49 beads and pendants of variscite and no fewer than 92 polished blades of fibrolite (sillimanitite). Thus we are dealing with an exceptional concentration of extraordinary wealth, with the jades originating in the Alps (Monte Viso, Monte Beigua, Moiry and Gemsstock) and the variscite in Spain (Encinasola). The Morbihan was thus at the heart of a system that drew in precious items from distant sources, 1000 or more kilometres away. We have been able to demonstrate this by comparing the objects of jade and variscite with our raw material reference collections, comprising thousands of samples collected in the Alps and the Iberian peninsula. Pinpointing the sources of axe- and adze-heads of fibrolite is harder. Several more or less significant outcrops are known in Finistère, the Massif central and Spain. However, researchers have only been able to draw conclusions according to the raw material samples at their disposal and the different regional typology of axeheads. Thus, for Alexis Damour in 1865, the fibrolite polished blades from Mané er Hroà«ck were thought to originate in the Massif central. According to Louis Marsille in 1920, the source was claimed to be the Morbihan coast, where this rock was collected in the form of cobbles. In 1952, Jean Cogné and Pierre-Roland Giot observed that at least four Breton sources could have been exploited, and concluded that this ‘ordinary’ rock would not have had a particular value. In contrast, Charles-Tanguy Le Roux in 1979 underlined the special nature of the ‘Carnac’style’ axe- and adze-heads of fibrolite, which had no convincing match in Brittany. The blades found at Mané er Hroà«ck (like those from Tumiac at Arzon and Mont Saint-Michel at Carnac) will have been long-distance imports, worthy of inclusion in the grave of a god-king. Since 2000, this hypothesis has been put forward by Serge Cassen, following his comparison of these blades with those from the area around Madrid. Cassen’s suggestion was not, however, followed up by geologists in the interpretation of the results of the mineralogical analyses undertaken since 2009, among which are those for the axehead found in the chamber of Lannec er Gadouer at Erdeven. Without a raw material reference collection that included specimens from outside Brittany, the identification of potential sources was necessarily biased. In April 2004, we took the next step in fieldwork in order to fill the gap in the raw material reference collection – just as we had done in the case of jades and variscite. Our prospection in the Rincà²n basin north of Madrid enabled us to gather nearly 300 samples of fibrolite, then in November, to observe in the Auvergne a further c. 200 axeheads out of fibrolite. As a result it has been possible to open the field of comparison to areas outside of Brittany and seek the closest comparanda for the blades of Mané er Hroà«ck. A striking resemblance was noted between these axe- and adze-heads in the Morbihan and the samples from Horcajuelo de la Sierra; in contrast, the Massif central can now be ruled out of the list of plausible comparanda. Serge Cassen’s hypothesis has therefore been reactivated – with all the more reason, given his observation that the Spanish and Morbihannais fibrolite axe- and adze-heads share the same ‘archaeological’ characteristics. Thus, the importation of Iberian fibrolite axe- and adze-heads has been confirmed; what remains is to clarify the scale of the phenomenon in France. Currently, nearly 200 polished blades can be shown to have been made of Horcajuelo fibrolite – and, possibly, of fibrolite more broadly from the Guadarrama and North Madrid sierras. Most have come from funerary contexts in the Morbihan. Their cutting edge shows no sign of use; this underlines the status of these adze-heads as being the preserve of a handful of individuals. Spanish fibrolite blades are also found in mounds of more modest proportions in southern Brittany and the Vendée coast. There can be no doubt of the association of these blades with ‘Carnac society’. Outside of the funerary context, Iberian blades are rare. Often they were treated in unusual ways. They have been identified at the foot of an alignment of standing stones, at Groah Denn on the island of Hoà«dic. Four miniature axeheads, made by reworking full-sized Carnac blades of fibrolite, have been found at Gavrinis. But a surprise was to demonstrate that at Er Lannic – a socalled workshop for producing blades – numerous fibrolite examples had been imported. Moreover, they had been broken using heavy blows of a stone hammer; it is hard to escape the idea that some kind of sacrifice was going on here, in a religious context underlined by the presence of an extraordinary number of Castellic-style ‘incense burners’. In the Morbihan, the polished blades of Iberian fibrolite must have formed part of the ensemble of long-distance movements, along with items of jades and of variscite. The elite of the Carnac area played a strategic role in the process of attracting and manipulating these objects of wealth. We must, however, try to understand the specific status of the polished blades of fibrolite, as at Mané er Hroà«ck, where they were grouped separately from the objects of jades and of variscite. One also needs to ask why the axe- and adze-heads of Iberian fibrolite seem not to have featured in the large non-funerary deposits such as that of Bernon at Arzon, which consists entirely of axeheads of Alpine jades.