First workshop of the REFIT project (refitproject.com) - Bibracte, March 2016 Exploring integrated approaches to cultural landscapes Current strategies, problems and potential Iron Age oppida as a case study

1. The landscape as an alternative
Vincent Guichard REFIT 1st workshop
Directeur général, Bibracte EPCC Bibracte, 21-23 March
2016
Can we avoid our ancestors
the Gauls (or the Celts) ?

2. Limestone head from Mšecké Žehrovice, Bohemia
3rd
/2nd
c. BC
Prague, National Museum
In temperate Europe, the people of the
second half of the last millennium
before the turn of era are the earliest
to be named by historical sources.
Keltoi and Galatai by Greek authors,
Celtae and Galli by Roman authors,
crystallize the attention of modern
Europeans in their existential quest
for origins...
This historical matter is all the more
malleable that the ancient written
sources are few and imprecise.
A figurative representation like that of
Mšecké Žehrovice leaves the door
open to all kinds of interpretation :
Celtic ? Boii ? Divinity ? Ancestor
turned to a hero ?

3. The catechism of the French Third Republic :
The Gauls as ancestors of the French people
‘A long time ago, France, our homeland, was almost entirely covered with
large forests. There were few cities, and the slightest farm of our village,
children, would have seemed a palace. France was called Gaul, and the
half-wild men who lived there were the Gauls.
Our ancestors the Gauls were tall and strong, with skin as white as milk,
blue eyes and long blond or red hair they left floating on the shoulders. They
felt above all the courage and freedom. They laughed at death.They
adorned themselves for battle as for a party.
Their women, our mothers of the past, yielded nothing for their courage.
They followed their husbands to war ; chariots dragged their children and
baggage ; enormous fierce dogs escorting the chariot…’
Le Tour de France de deux enfants [The Tour around France by two children] by G.
Bruno (1877)

4. The Gauls have been mobilized
to build the French Nation...
‘The Romans want to take our country !
We must defend ourselves.
Let’s walk and push them out of Gaul,
our homeland.’
Illustration from Histoire de France by Ernest Lavisse, 1913

5. … until their enlistment by the Vichy regime during World War 2
‘Vercingetorix making the gift of himself to the victorious Roman Imperator’
In : De Vercingétorix à Pétain, le don de soi-même, by Jacques Reynaud, illustrated by Jean Chieze, Paris, 1942

6. … while the Celts were spared by the Nazi (and other totalitarist) propaganda

7. In the 90s , central to European construction, the Gauls give way to the Celts :
they have the advantage of not being tied to a particular nation-state,
thereby making them available to support any communitarian issue
In the 90s , central to European construction, the Gauls give way to the Celts :
they have the advantage of not being tied to a particular nation-state,
thereby making them available to support any communitarian issue
The Celts as ancestors of the Europeans…
I Celti : la prima Europa, Venice exhibition, 1991

8. The Celts serving regional communitarianisms…
…in Galicia
…in Asturias
… among many other places

9. … and the raise of a globalized Celtic folklore

10. Standing on Mont-Beuvray (820 m),
in the centre of Burgundy
20 km away from Autun / Augustodunum,
Bibracte was the earliest capital of the Aedui,
in the 1st century BC
 An historical place, where Vercingetorix was given the
leadership of the Gaulish coalition in 52 BC and where Julius
Caesar finished the writing up of the De Bello Gallico
 A major archaeological site which allowed Joseph
Déchelette to define the fortified towns (oppida) that
characterize the late Iron Age in temperate Europe, at the
beginning of the 20th
century
Autun / Augustodunum
Bibracte

11. Field research resumed in 1984
under... very traditional
and national auspices.
François Mitterrand (1916 - 1995) à Bibracte en 1984
‘On 17th September 1985
François Mitterrand
President of the Republic,
proclaimed Bibracte, major place of the history
of France, National Site.
Here was made the union of the Gallic chiefs
around Vercingetorix’

12. Bibracte Museum , opened in 1995 by François Mitterrand,
does not escape the Celtic revival of the time, at least by its name...
Bibracte Museum , opened in 1995 by François Mitterrand,
does not escape the Celtic revival of the time, at least by its name...

13. In fact, it is a site museum which has the ambition to insert Bibracte
in a wide geographical and historical context , by ’posing ’ the Celts
at the beginning of the visit…
In fact, it is a site museum which has the ambition to insert Bibracte
in a wide geographical and historical context , by ’posing ’ the Celts
at the beginning of the visit…

14. …before developing a more frankly archaeological narrative :
Bibracte as part of a network of fortified settlements extending over a
large area (‘Celtic Europe’) at the end of the Iron Age.
…before developing a more frankly archaeological narrative :
Bibracte as part of a network of fortified settlements extending over a
large area (‘Celtic Europe’) at the end of the Iron Age.

15. …all of this in an architectural envelope of high quality,
at the level of a project decided at the summit of the State
…all of this in an architectural envelope of high quality,
at the level of a project decided at the summit of the State
Pierre-Louis Faloci, architectePierre-Louis Faloci, architecte

16. Since the 1990s,
Celtomaniacs have given way to Celtosceptics
…a topic which still causes
controversy (at least in Britain)
‘CELTS – ART AND IDENTITY REVIEW:
AN UNINTENTIONAL RESURRECTION’
‘British Museum exhibition seems
intended to bury the Celts
but ends up reviving them
in all their misty splendour’
The Guardian (September 22, 2015)
2015

17. This narrative is the product of the confusion of vocabulary (between the Celts of historians,
archaeologists and linguists ) and of the popularity of the culturalist reading of archaeological
data, whose heralds were Gustav Kossina and Gordon Childe
This narrative is the product of the confusion of vocabulary (between the Celts of historians,
archaeologists and linguists ) and of the popularity of the culturalist reading of archaeological
data, whose heralds were Gustav Kossina and Gordon Childe
In the meantime, it was agreed that it was necessary to abandon the grand
narrative of the Celtic migrations, built since the late nineteenth century

18. How, in this context, to rebuild in 2010
the narrative of a site museum which initially aimed
to be a showcase of the archaeology of ‘Celtic Europe’ ?
?

19. The choice was to return to the conception of Joseph Déchelette
for whom it is the nature of relationships between people
that counts, not their identity
The scientist who introduced the Bibracte European archaeological community
fell on the front in 1914 and was honored as a patriot ...
Despite the fact that he distrusted nationalism, unlike most historians of the time.

20. Déchelette’s approach was essentially spatial :
he sought on distribution maps the signs of a world
connected in many ways and at multiple scales

21. The choice : to consider the place of Mont-Beuvray itself as the
subject of the museum, rather than the people who is supposed
to have invested it at some point in its history

22. The choice : to consider the place itself as the subject of the
museum, rather than the people who is supposed to have
invested it at some point in its history
⇒ The approach focuses on archaeological data and offers a reading of the time of
Bibracte in terms of human geography

23. The choice : to consider the place itself as the subject of the
museum, rather than the people who is supposed to have
invested it at some point in its history
⇒ Approach in terms of human geography
⇒ The ancient inhabitants of Bibracte are apprehended only as our predecessors in
this place, that they have contributed to shape and where they have left traces of their
passage printed in the ground

24. The choice : to consider the place itself as the subject of the
museum, rather than the people who is supposed to have
invested it at some point in its history
⇒ Approach in terms of human geography
⇒ The ancient inhabitants of Bibracte : our predecessors rather than our ancestors
⇒ The question of the cultural identity of these ancient inhabitants is relegated to a
secondary level (when the data of archaeologists are briefly compared with those of
historians and linguists )

25. The choice : to consider the place itself as the subject of the
museum, rather than the people who is supposed to have
invested it at some point in its history
⇒ Approach in terms of human geography
⇒ The ancient inhabitants of Bibracte : our predecessors rather than our ancestors
⇒The question of the cultural identity of the inhabitants relegated to second place
⇒ The question of the ‘Celtic heritage’ is treated only through what can be
demonstrated by archeology, i.e. mainly through the elements of the use of the space
dated to the Iron Age, from which remain active traces today

26. The choice : to consider the place itself as the subject of the museum
=> The connexion of the museum with the surrounding landscape helps a lot

27. Archaeology allows us to cross the ancient inhabitants of Bibracte
only through their traces inprinted in the ground

28. This impressionistic approach of the ancient inhabitants of
Bibracte leaves an impassable gulf between them and us
in 1996

29. This impressionistic approach of the ancient inhabitants of
Bibracte leaves an impassable gulf between them and us
in 2013

30. The museum is the entrance to the archaeological site,
which is revealed in its forest setting

31. Mirroring the revelation of the ancient Bibracte proposed by the museum,
The presentation of the archaeological site is based on the gradual revelation
of the topographical frame of the Gallic city.
2005 2012
2025 2050 2090
1947

32. Introducing a geographic space by telling the story of its construction
by the successive generations of our predecessors,
isn’t it the most obvious museographic use that can be made
of the results of archaeological research?

33. ‘Si l’on veut essayer de retrouver
quelque chose des Gaulois,
j’entends quelque chose
que le paysage porte encore,
même après tant de siècles,
c’est à Bibracte qu’il faut aller,
sur ce mont Beuvray
dominant les plateaux du Morvan.’
‘If one wants to recover
something of the Gauls
– I mean something
that the landscape still bears
even after so many centuries –
one should go to Bibracte,
to this Mont-Beuvray
dominating the hills of Morvan’
Jacques Lacarrière
Chemin faisant
1974