Protohistory

Protohistory

Period of the Iron Age, 800-50 BC.

The Michel Sireix room displays our current knowledge of this period in Aquitaine. We discover the funeral rites of people in the first Iron Age, 800-450 BC. The prolific tumuli in Ibos (Hautes-Pyrénées) and Pau (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) have yielded many funerary urns accompanied by weapons, which were sometimes deliberately broken, and fibulae (brooches), torques (neck rings) and belt buckles.
The anthropomorphic post from Soulac-sur-Mer, dated 450 BC, is one of the very rare examples of wooden protohistoric statues in France.

The second Iron Age, 450-50 BC, is mainly typified by the Lacoste site (Mouliets-et-Villemartin, Gironde), a rich crafts and trading village at the border between Celtic Gaul and Aquitaine Gaul. Trade, iron and bronze working, agriculture, daily life and pottery are themes presented alongside the reconstruction of a Gallic blacksmith’s workshop.
Recent excavations in Bordeaux have unearthed some pottery and decorative objects, and also some stone statues, exceptional testimony to Gallic society.

The Iron Age came to an end with the Gallic Wars led by Caesar and it was in Aquitaine that the last battle took place, in Uxellodunum (Saint-Denis-les-Martels, Lot) in 51 BC. The Museum exhibits some of the Gallic weapons found on this site, relics from the end of Gallic independence.