Lou Cayla, Mailhac : one of The High Places

Les hauts lieux.

French is an impoverished language. Its dictionaries are a third smaller than ours, but it still manages to be poetic and expressive. So when I say I’ve just visited one of ‘les hauts lieux ‘ I don’t mean an arduous climb. I’ve just explored one of the great places in the south of France – massive, significant and important. But for all this it is still a low-lying, modest site with little to distinguish it from the landscape around.

The story is both extraordinary and humdrum. A fourteen-year-old girl, Odette Taffanel, begins to find things in her family’s vineyards in 1929. After the War, in 1948, she starts taking it seriously. In the 50’s she ropes in her younger brother Jean. Their work together unearths one of the biggest late bronze/early iron age sites in the Midi. Archaeologists flock to the site, and careers are made. She is awarded the Legion d’Honneur . The site and its findings are considered so significant that ‘Mailhacais’ becomes a benchmark for pottery and funerary rites in the Urn-Field culture of southern France. At 93, she is still writing and publishing – and still receiving visitors at her house in the village.

Photo of a grave emplacement – Necropolis  Bassin 1

But the story of Lou Cayla goes back further than the Ancien Village – it starts with water from an abundant spring, a grotto, and a dolmen, all on the same small insignificant hill.

For more info and photos on all these aspects, see the Lou Cayla Parent Page.

Semi-detached oppidum at le Carla, Durban Corbieres

Quid.fr is France’s Encyclopedia Britannica – and has this to say about the canton of Durban Corbières:

Vestiges Préhistoriques : 1 – Oppidum de Carla. 2 – Habitation Gallo-Romain au Roc de Carla

. . . and that is the sum-total of information that I can find on the site. I came across this meagre thread while researching the dolmen de Palats which lies 2 km. north. We drove past le Roc a few days ago :-

- and the only words for it are impregnable and inhospitable. With uninhabitable running a close third. The first two are desirable in a defensive stronghold – but its location is not obvious. As far as I am aware this oppidum is a lone outpost, far from the linked chain of defensive hill-settlements that runs east-west along the Aude river valley to command the long-established trade-route [that became the Via Aquitania and now the Autoroute des Deux Mers]. It has intermittent streams at the base of the rock [Carla is a version of Cayla, or Caylar - occitan for caillou, or pebble - a diminuitively affectionate term for these jagged outcrops that were favoured sites throughout the region]. But the main river that runs through this fairly barren part of the Corbières is La Berre, and that passes well to the south, through Durban – with its mediaeval castle high on a rock.

It is also possible that this was one of the more northern oppida belonging to the ibero-celtic tribes who built the oppidum de Ruscino [at Perpignan] later to become the ‘capitol’ of the Roussillon region.

Had I been alone I would probably have spent a painfully futile afternoon up there, hoping for a photograph of a crumbled wall or two – but I had wiser counsel beside me. So we drove on to the dolmen. This now joins the lengthening list of sites that require some local knowledge – and a set of crampons.

Co-ordinates for the oppidum: 2. 46′ 43″ E, 43. 00′ 36″ N on the IGN map at www.geoportail.fr or in decimal degrees: 2.778600 43.010000 and it lies 8 km. north of Durban on the D40 to Coustouge.

The oppidum in Languedoc

The word is derived from the early Latin ob-pedum: ‘enclosed space’, and possibly from the Proto-Indo-European ‘pedóm-’ , an occupied space or footprint.
Julius Caesar described the larger Celtic Iron Age settlements he encountered in Gaul as oppida and the term is now used to describe the large pre-Roman towns that existed all across Western and Central Europe. Many oppida grew from hill forts but not all of them had defensive functions. The main features of the oppida are the architectural construction of the walls and gates, the spacious layout and commanding view of the surrounding area.
The development of oppida was a milestone in the urbanisation of the continent as they were the first large settlements north of the Mediterranean that could genuinely be described as towns. Caesar pointed out that each tribe of Gaul would have several oppida but that they were not all of equal importance, perhaps implying some form of hierarchy.

Hillforts, enclosures, defensive spurs, walls and ditches do not spring up in times of ease and peaceable neighborliness. It is during times of fear and uncertainty that massive effort is demanded of the local populace – producing, in our small area of the Aude, many significant ‘proto-castles’ during the transitional period Bronze final/ Premier Age de Fer.
The uncertainty must have started with the collapse of the Minoan civilisation, and again when vital trading links were lost with the end of the Mycenean empire. This Dark Age lasted for over three centuries. The fear? Rumours of a north-eastern race that were armed with new weapons and new skills: The Volques Tectosages and their Iron – the coming of the Celts.
Our local autocthones [native inhabitants] were the ‘peuples élisyques’ – a tribe centred on the Montlaurès hill-settlement, above the lagoons surrounding modern Narbonne – called by the Greek traders, Hélicé. South of here towards Spain were the Iberic tribes, and east towards Italy were the Ligurians. Herodotus of Halicarnassus writing in the 5th C BCE in his History [ Book 7 ch. 165] writes of a mercenary army made up of Phoenicians, Lybians, Iberians, Ligurians, Elysics, Sards [of Sardinia], and Cyrnians [Corsicans] – that is, all the tribes around the Gulf of Lion and the western Mediterranean.

For centuries preceeding the arrival of the Celts, the Elisycs ruled from Narbonne in the east to Carcassonne in the west. A short stretch of territory but an area that was rich in mineral wealth and full of cultural and historical wealth: the biggest dolmens, menhirs and necropoli in Languedoc. For millennia this land had been a benign and peaceable trading corridor : Pyrennean sheep herds in transhumance arriving from the South, Cornish tin and Irish silver in transit from the North, Cypriot copper and Greek wine in boats from the sea. All had to pass the marshy plain of the Atax/Attagus – the River Aude – between the foothills of the Montagnes Noires and the massif of Mont Alaric and the Corbieres Hills. All benefited from the mineral wealth – the gold and manganese – and the metallurgic skills of the local tribes. And from the peace and stability that had held since the Copper Age.
The breakdown of this civilisation led to the Dark Ages : the elaborately decorated pottery, the exchange of ornaments from afar, as evinced in funerary goods – gave way to a cruder and unadorned ceramic style, and to the rise of warrior classes and a heirarchy of power and protection.
Thus a series of proto-castles were constructed around -800 by the Elisyan people, on promontories that allowed commanding views out over the plain and the road and river traffic, and security from attack by means of massive earth- and stone-works. From the oppida by the sea at Peyriac-de-Mer and Pech Maho in the east, past the the two vast settlements at Montlaurès and Ensérune, to La Moulinasse at Salles d’Aude, and on west inland to one of the greatest settlement-towns of the hinterland : La Cayla at Mailhac. And thence to Mourrel-Ferret at Olonzac, Camp Rolland here above our village of Moux, and onward to the Cros hill fort at Caulnes-Minervois and the Millegrand oppidum at Trebes – with Carsac at Carcassonne at the eastern limit. The pattern continues up towards the Atlantic coast – all defending and provisioning the vital trade route to the North.
It was however the Volques Tectosages themselves, centred on Toulouse, who took them over and re-established the trading-routes, ceding them eventually to the Romans – who made good use of some of them, while razing others to the ground.

There are six main oppida here in The Aude – follow the links in the Pages panel to the right. The Cros Hillfort and the Pic St-Martin hillfort have already been published there – the Roc Gris oppidum will be next, followed by the Mourrel-Ferrat oppidum. More to follow.

The Real Gallo-Roman Hillfort

The information given on Quid for the Oppidum du Pic St-Martin is accurate – while the new IGN Seies Bleu map – and the www.geoportail.fr placing – is out by nearly 2 km. Its position is 2. 39′ 54″ E, 43. 20′ 11″ N and it is a most impressive structure. The site was occupied continuously from the Iron Age through to the arrival of the Visigoths. The earliest inhabitants were possibly the Ibères or the Ligures, but more certainly the Volques Tectosages [ a Celtic tribe that put up a fierce resistance to the invading Romans, and who were themselves an invading force from Middle Europe - the name translates best as Land-hungry Wolves ].

The scree slope rises about 300 feet from here to the walls.

More photos and info on the Pic St-Martin Hillfort Page

Standing Stones, and lying maps

Quid is France’s Encyclopedia Britannica, on paper since 1967 and online since 1997. IGN is the Institute Géographique National – it began as an army mapping service in 1887 and went public in 1967. They are invaluable tools in researching old stones but they are not without weaknesses. This is what I found for Siran, a village nearby in the Minervois:

Cachette de fondeur de l’âge du Bronze à Centeilles. [Traces of Bronze Age smelting]
29 dolmens* et tumulus.
Habitat préhistorique à Centeilles, Ausine, Belvédère.
Champ des Morts.
Nécropole 1^er âge du Fer à La Prade.
14 villas romaines, principalement : Najac, Saint-Michel de Montflaunez.
Oppidum du pic St-Martin occupé de l’âge du Fer au 6^ème apr.J.-C.
Mosaïque gallo-romaine* à la chapelle de Centeilles.
Tombes wisigothiques à La Rouviole, Le Champ des Morts, Centeilles, Saint-Martin, Saint-Pierre des Troupeaux, Saint-Gontran.

And this is what the new IGN map says is there:

Centeilles seemed central to this rich and diverse little corner, and was one of the few from the list to be marked on the map, as was the Gallo-Roman fort [camp or oppidum] closeby. That confident red star looked a certain bet, so I set off this saturday to see what I could find – knowing that information on Quid could well be long out-of-date and that I could be beating around the bush all afternoon for nothing. But not suspecting that the map could get it so wrong.

The 13th.C. Chapelle de Notre-Dame-de-Centeilles was certainly there with its stone roof and holy well – as was a host of other fascinating structures and features [see following Posts & Pages] – and so were the remains of a massive emplacement deep in the wood where the map shows the red star. It wasn’t until I got home and compared this new map with the 1967 version that doubt set in about The Thing in the Wood. I now needed to persuade Jessi and Mary to come out on another hunt this sunday.

The story of this weekend’s two visits to Centeilles is complicated, so the photos about it all are over on the Pages section. Starting with the Not the Gallo-Roman Camp Page. And as fast as I can post them, the following will appear :-

The real Ancien Camp Gallo-Romain on the Pic St-Martin Hillfort Page.

The dolmen of Centeilles – or les Pierres Plantées, take your pick – on the Centeilles Dolmen Page.

The dolmen du Mourel des Fadas – on the Dolmen des Fadas Page.

The Chapelle de Notre-Dame de Centeilles – the extraordinary frescoes, its history, holy well and capitelles – on the Chapelle de Centeilles Page.

And the second earlier church at Centeilles [in many ways even more extraordinary] – on the Chapelle Ruinée Page. There was a third even earlier church here at one time – but it’s been lost . . .

And then there’s those Roman villas, and the visigoth necropoli, and the neolithic habitat here too, somewhere – but I need another visit or ten, for them.

Cros hillfort

Commanding the valley-plain of the Aude, at the edge of a plateau, the Cros hill-fort was built at the end of the Bronze Age (VIII-VII bc). This defensive construction is the most complete exemple of a fortification of this period in west Languedoc. The 470 metre long wall encloses an area of 5,25 hectares or 13 acres. It was constructed without elaborate care in dry-stone walling, 2.5 m. wide, with two facets and a rubble in-fill. Its original height was 2 metres – now reduced to one. Bastions or towers are still visible: these would have been higher. Wooden palissades would raise the height further.

Now covered by pines that provide welcome shade – the original fort would have stood on clear ground: at 350 m. above sea-level this would have been cold and exposed in winter, and very hot in summer.

Go to Pages, on the right, for more info, photos and references.