Le village de la Capelière en Camargue

Overview & Synopsis

The site of La Capelière is located between the Vaccarès lagoon and the palaeochannels of the Rhône of Ulmet, one of the two major branches of the ancient Rhône delta. The studied terrain, currently in the Réserve naturelle nationale de Camargue, is at a very low altitude. The geoarchaeological excavations undertaken from 1997 to 2002 by a multidisciplinary team, with the emphasis set on environmental studies, have revealed a human occupation of one millennium, from 500 BC to the 6th century AD. This long history, interspersed with periods of abandonment, can be divided into five main sequences, of which the first four range from 490 BC to AD 60. The small village of La Capelière, built in an environment associated with strong constraints (floods), is described through the analysis of archaeological data (vernacular architecture, stratigraphy, and artefacts), palaeoenvironmental data, and agropastoral and fishery resources, as an unusual settlement, by both the number and variety of the commercial products which have been found. The critical and comparative study of this information not only shows successive cultural evolutions of the village over the centuries, but also enables us to perceive the village as a trading outpost for Arles. La Capelière was not a place of redistribution, but the site where navigators and river ferrymen gathered as part of the initial Arles ‘nautes’.