As part of the exhibition of the Pas du Loup menhir statue, on Wednesday June 19, the conference “Menhir statues, another look at the end of the Neolithic in Uzège” took place, given by Philippe Galant, archaeologist at the regional service of archeology at the DRAC.
The Occitanie region is a region extremely rich in prehistoric remains. “We have unique things including menhir statues.” In the Paleolithic, Man was a predator, in the Neolithic, Man became a producer and therefore became sedentary. Sedentary settlement leads to a better quality of life and allows people to seek out territories further afield, gradually moving up into the hinterland to the Cévennes where they come into contact with populations coming down from the Massif Central. The menhir statues are part of the final Neolithic (2,500 BCE) after which there was a brutal social rupture with an almost total disappearance of populations. People had to clear land to settle. These are the first changes in landscape structure. The production economy was based on agro-pastoralism. “We should not imagine these populations at the end of the Neolithic as people isolated on their territory but more as people who had a social life.” There was real management of food in the long term.
La Gardonnenque differs from other territories
They developed megalithism. “Socially it’s very interesting, you don’t make a dolmen with three people (extracting and moving several tons of slabs). There is a fairly exceptional concentration of menhir statues in the region, discovered from the second half of the 19th century. They allow us to question ourselves, they are another perspective that we can take on the people who lived in our territories. “The methods were transmitted in space and time with specific tools for each stage. The representations of clothing and everyday objects (jewelry, weapons) were a reflection of everyday life. “Beware of false friends, they have been reused over time. We all highlighted stones found in our garden. They did the same.” The cultural mosaic (space where people use the same objects, the same decorations, or the same ways of doing things) shows a homogeneity of society in Gardonnenque which is different from other territories. This is proof that menhir statues are part of the cultural pack. “DSince the end of the Neolithic, society has been operating on a complicated, territorialist social model. We didn’t invent anything. “
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