Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2026

Settlement patterns and social organisation during the Middle Bronze Age around the fortified site of Camp du Château at Salins-les-Bains (Jura, France)

Résumé

The Franche-Comté region, located on the western border of the Jura Massif, is rich in numerous prehistoric hilltop settlements. Among the fortified sites aligned along the edge of the first plateau, the Camp du Château at Salins-les-Bains was studied in the early 2000s by Jean-François Piningre. These excavations revealed the detailed layout of the site and the structure of its fortifications. Although the occupation of the fortified site is attested during the second half of the Middle Bronze Age and the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, the surrounding area has yielded no direct evidence of contemporary occupation, apart from two burial mounds that remain poorly documented. The Camp du Château occupies a strategic position at the entrance to a deep valley on a natural route between the Saône plain and the interior of the Jura Massif, leading towards the Swiss Plateau. The density of direct evidence of occupation therefore appears very low, considering the potential of this zone in terms of resource control and circulation. This is why a systematic metal detector survey was carried out within a radius of twenty kilometres of the hilltop site, in order to search for new archaeological remains. Conducted legally over the last twenty years, this programme led to the discovery of 85 metal hoards and more than 200 isolated bronze objects. In the immediate vicinity of the hillfort, around fifty hoards can be dated to the transitional phase between the Middle and Late Bronze Age, thus contemporaneous with its period of occupation. While the available settlement data do not appear to be representative of the occupation during this period, the metal finds – through their location, quantity and nature – offer a valuable source of information for understanding both the spatial organisation of the area and the social structuring of the local communities. Today, thanks to the remarkable number of discoveries studied in situ, the Salins-les-Bains area is the only part of Franche-Comté where a more detailed study of Bronze Age settlement patterns can be undertaken.

Fichier non déposé

Dates et versions

hal-05577485 , version 1 (02-04-2026)

Identifiants

Citer

Estelle Gauthier, Jean-François Piningre. Settlement patterns and social organisation during the Middle Bronze Age around the fortified site of Camp du Château at Salins-les-Bains (Jura, France). Martin Bartelheim/André Spatzier (eds.), Hierarchisation Processes in the 2nd Millennium BC in the Upper Danube Region. Abstract book for the International Workshop at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, 20.-21.07.2025, Propylaeum-eBOOKS, pp.71-76, 2026, ⟨10.11588/propylaeumdok.00006961⟩. ⟨hal-05577485⟩
25 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

  • More