« Tournus cathedral: the Romanesque par excellence | Home | The Summer Medieval Fair in Autun High Town »

The La Tene exhibition at Bibracte Museum

Bibracte, outside Autun, not only boasts a fine museum exploring its own site, but also hosts, what seems to be, on the two examples that I’ve seen, a fine touring programme. This year it is celebrating the Swiss Iron Age site at La Tene.

The exhibition begins with a stunningly evocative imagining of what you’d probably describe as a trestle bridge with cart being driven across as horseman waits to cross. Then an archaeological plan demonstrates that it was about 80m long and less than 3m wide. This is La Tene’s crowning glory – what made it a stunning site even to the 19th-century discoverers, who’d usually be looking more for treasure than wooden remains.

I am less sure about a lurid image from a documentary film Le Crepusculedes Celtes (2008), showing it heavily studded with military trophies, including human and animal skulls and complete slain captives who have been left to rot down to bone.

There were, we learn, nearby 16 skulls found, but half of these were women and children. The males often showed signs of possibly deadly injuries, but one has to wonder how often the bridge might have been fought over.

One question asked by the exhibition is: Were there women at La Tene? (Obvious there were some dead ones). But the question is raised because, as the commentary says, there are very few objects associated with women, compared to huge quantity of arms. But there is glass jewellery and terracotta. And maybe women were carrying arms?

What there certainly were, again from the bones, are plenty of horses, or rather ponies – studies of the bones have shown that by today’s standards they were only that, and on the small side even in that class. But they obviously took some controlling. Among the items found were some remarkably complete bits, of types entirely recognisable to riders today.

Also found were brooches, used in pairs to fasten cloaks, and these were obviously well groomed individuals: razors, scissors and epilatory tweezers were found.

As a visitor you are also offered a video of a reconstruction of the bridge. But they are cheating: using chainsaws! But reconstruction of the joints is interesting – there are samples here – this is seriously sophisticated carpentry. The builders weren’t just nailing together a few logs and hoping that it stuck together.

Presumably to make it less frightening for animals – who can’t have come across bridges every day, it is postulated that the fall of the logs was filled over with sawdust, making a smooth, padded road surface.

And the wonders of dendochronolgy have dated bridge very precisely, to between 660 and 655BC. The exhibition explains that the area was important as the crossing of three trade route – on the Rhone, the Rhine and the Danube. It was in the territory of the Helvetes tribe, and its importance was no flash in the pan: the area around it, of three lakes, boast also many Neolithic and Roman finds.

This isn’t, in truth, a stunningly spectacular exhibition – it lacks the finds to make it so, but it does tell a fascinating story. If you’re any sort of local, you should fit in a visit. And if you haven’t been to Bibracte, then you should visit its stunning home museum and spectacularly Gallic site (yes, Caesar slept here, but soon after he did the Roman centre moved out of this hill fortress and down on to the plain at Autun). They are making a lot this year of a new, experimental cover over the ongoing excavations – though have to say it just looks like a tent to me!

The exhibition continues until November 15. More about La Tene.