De grès et de chêne : l'enceinte néolithique de La Villeneuve-au-Châtelot (Aube), « Les Communes - La Pièce des Quarante ». Exploitation et mise en oeuvre des ressources

The Neolithic enclosure of “Les Communes – La Pièce des Quarante” is located at La Villeneuve-au-Châtelot, Aube dép. (France). It stands out with an exceptional preservation of wooden posts and a concentration of hundreds of stones, including reused ground stone tools. This site has been discovered through a quarry extension project on the Seine floodplain. The excavations are not achieved yet, three sectors have been dug from 2013 to 2015, covering a total surface of 6.5 ha. The enclosure is made of one narrow palisade ditch, divided in sections leaving few entrances of various types. Identified on its south-western part, the site may stand on several dozen hectares. The inner part has not been much excavated and seems empty, no settlement linked to the enclosure has been found for now. Except for ground stone tools and wooden post bases, few archaeological finds has been discovered.These posts, made of oak (Quercus spp.), provide a dendrochronological dating at 3,232 BC. Most of them (164) are tangentially split, 28 are radially split, 14 are semi-circularly split and only 4 complete logs are present. The tangential split is harder to implement than the radial split and requires high quality trees, but this technique provides the best planks for construction. Inner face of split trunks is always located on the outer side of the palisade, providing a flat facade to the enclosure. Some post bases reveal various types of notches which probably have a function in the transport or construction techniques. Several planks are split in a single tree. Cross-checking reveals that the studied sample comes from at least 60 trees. They have slowly grown in two different forests and both were primary forests.The ditch 1015 is the only one that contains blocking stones. Their study on “phase 2A” excavation shows that their presence depends on the substrate composition: they are absent in the clay and present in the sand or gravel. More blocking stones are also present in the two “omega” entrances, showing that the architecture was reinforced there. Most of the blocking stones are made of various facies of local sandstone, in different proportions for rough blocks and ground stone tools fragments. On the 1,243 studied stones, 534 are ground stone tools fragments. A refitting campaign is ongoing to get the rough fragments coming from ground stone tools. The reuse of ground stone tools as building material is a major practice on this site. Although, all these tools have been deliberately broken by burning. Including those from “phase 1A”, 612 ground stone tools fragments have been found in ditch 1,015. Most of them are querns (491 fragments), 42 are grinders, 30 are polishers; the rest are undetermined grinding tools and a few other tools (hammerstones, crushing slabs…). The firsts refittings show that the number of complete querns is about a hundred, so these tools are really over-represented and purposely chosen. Some querns slightly worn could have been used longer. They were probably not abandoned when they were broken to be reused in the palisade. The collection can be considered chronologically homogeneous. The presence of “basin querns”, usually dated of the third millennium BC, has to be noticed. The destruction of usable tools may have had economical consequences on the community who owned them. This and the systematic breaking suggests the symbolic purpose of the reuse.Although the meaning of this practice is unknown, it gives a particular status to the enclosure. Its large size contrasts with the simplicity of its architecture, but the preserved wooden posts reveals its monumentality. A large population had to be involved in this construction, but the apparent emptiness of the enclosure and its narrow entrances does not indicate a settlement. A local analysis could bring some clues : less than 1 km toward west, contemporary sites of “Le Gué Dehan” and “Le Haut de Launoy” at Pont-sur-Seine constitutes a group of houses in a causewayed enclosure. Palisade enclosure of “Les Communes – La Pièce des Quarante” could be related to these sites. A regional problematic also appears. This territory is a geographic and cultural crossroads densely occupied since the Middle Neolithic, with large Late Neolithic settlements around Pont-sur-Seine. Therefore, the ongoing researches on the enclosure of “Les Communes – La Pièce des Quarante” should improve our knowledge about regional Neolithic.
Une enceinte palissadée du Néolithique récent a été fouillée à l’occasion d’un projet d’extension de carrière sur la commune de La Villeneuve-au-Châtelot (Aube), elle se distingue par la conservation exceptionnelle des matériaux organiques et une concentration localisée de plusieurs centaines de blocs de grès. Bien que fouillée très partiellement, cette enceinte semble couvrir une superficie de plusieurs dizaines d’hectares. La structure est simplement constituée d’un étroit fossé palissadé, divisé en plusieurs segments. La découverte d’une série d’environ 300 bases de poteaux sur plus de 400 m linéaire de fossé documente l’exploitation des ressources forestières ainsi que le travail du bois. Des chênes ont été sélectionnés pour leur qualité dans une forêt primaire, puis fendus en madriers. Ceux-ci ont été disposés jointivement dans la palissade, de manière à former une surface continue. La mise en forme des pièces de bois est parfois relativement élaborée, avec des encoches de types variés à la base des poteaux. La dendrochronologie confirme la contemporanéité des différents segments de la palissade et date son érection de 3232 av. J.-C. L’étude des blocs de calage en grès lie leur présence à la nature du substrat et révèle un ancrage plus fort au niveau de deux entrées. Parmi ces blocs sont réemployés de nombreux macro-outils, surtout des meules. Ils ont été systématiquement fracturés au feu et beaucoup semblent ne pas avoir été à l’état d’abandon avant cette destruction. Cet acte est plus qu’une simple récupération opportuniste et a pu avoir des conséquences socio-économiques. Cela révèle le statut particulier de cette enceinte, bien que sa fonction demeure inconnue. De plus, sa proximité avec des sites importants à Pont-sur-Seine soulève la problématique territoriale, avec une concentration de population au Néolithique récent et de probables complémentarités entre sites contemporains.