The funerary area and the gallo-roman site of la “Barrière du Lot” in les Martres-de-Veyre (Puy-de-Dôme): old records and new data

Located in the so-called “Barrière du Lot” in the Martres-de-Veyre district, the “Chaumes d’Allier” funerary area consists of a burial site which was excavated between 1851 and 1923. The exceptional state of preservation of the organic remains which were unearthed there (hair, coffins, pieces of clothing, funerary furniture) granted the site its world-wide reputation although, paradoxically, it remained somewhat overlooked as a whole. The recent discovery of unpublished archival materials relating to the 19th-century and early 20th-century excavations, together with an archeo-anthropological study of the documents found at the Bargoin Museum in Clermont-Ferrand, provide a brand-new spatial …