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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Les minières de silex néolithiques des marais de Saint-Gond (Marne)

subject

description

In the southern and eastern area of the Côte d’Île-de-France, north of the marshes of Saint-Gond (Marne, France), research incorporating a great deal of unpublished documentation, and the results of pedestrian and aerial surveys, has highlighted five flint mines. For various reasons, the many indications of mining activity in this region have never been considered sufficient to consider it a mining area, however, the combination of a series of objective observations suggests the existence of five flint mines.In several sites, flint mining was conducted from shafts several metres deep, sometimes connected by galleries. As many archaeological discoveries made during the earlier excavations have not been conserved, dating and cultural attribution of the structures will be only possible with new research. Nonetheless, unpublished photographs and the dating of antler picks discovered in the mine at Vertus “Granval” (Marne) demonstrate this flint mine was exploited during the Late and Final Neolithic periods. Aerial surveys attest the presence of hundreds of shafts on some sites, where walking surveys have confirmed the abundance of good quality natural flint and large quantities of flint flakes.The identification of a mining complex in this area has fully raised anew the questions relating to research in this region, best known for its numerous hypogea concentrated along the Côte d’Île-de-France, between Épernay and Sézanne, particularly in the marshes of Saint-Gond. Such a concentration of collective graves raises the question why the people of the Late Neolithic period occupied this region so intensively. The flint mines were excavated in the Campanian chalk in the same areas as the hypogea. The assumption of contemporaneity of the two phenomena opens up new perspectives of research regarding occupation of this region.