The landscape as an alternative

Vincent Guichard REFIT 1st workshopDirecteur général, Bibracte EPCC Bibracte, 21-23 March 2016v.guichard@bibracte.fr

Can we avoid our ancestorsthe Gauls (or the Celts) ?

Limestone head from Mšecké Žehrovice, Bohemia3rd/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 ?

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)

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

… 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

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

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

The Celts serving regional communitarianisms……in Galicia

…in Asturias

… among many other places

… and the raise of a globalized Celtic folklore

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

Field research resumed in 1984 under... very traditional and national auspices.

François Mitterrand (1916 - 1995) à Bibracte en 1984

‘On 17th September 1985François MitterrandPresident 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’

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...

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…

…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.

…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

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

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

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’ ?

?

The choice was to return to the conception of Joseph Déchelettefor 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.

Déchelette’s approach was essentially spatial :he sought on distribution maps the signs of a world

connected in many ways and at multiple scales

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

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

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

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 )

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

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

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

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

in 1996

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

in 2013

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

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

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?

‘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 LacarrièreChemin faisant

1974