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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

L'espace funéraire et le site gallo-romain de la “ Barrière du Lot ” aux Martres-de-Veyre (Puy-de-Dôme) : fonds ancien et nouvelles données

Abstract : 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 The recent discovery of unpublished archival materials relating to the 19th-century and early 20th-century excavations, together with an archeo-anthropological study of the documents found at the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 approach to this funeral site. By shedding new light on the terms and conditions which governed the exploration of the site, the unearthed archives also allow us to understand its importance by attracting our attention to a number of graves barely seen or documented. These new documents, coupled with the archeological data coming from recent preventive and planned operations, allow us, at last, to get a global understanding of the ancien site known as “Barrière du Lot”, which had been interpreted for more than a century as an “urban area”.