Arvernes, Carnutes, Osismes, Eduens, Bituriges Where Allobroges… Recent paleogenomic analyses, this discipline which aims to reconstitute ancient genomes, have come to refine the knowledge that we possessed about the Gallic peoples who occupied the territory of France during the Iron Age, a period generally cut out first Iron Age (or Hallstat from 800-400 BC) and second Iron Age (or La Tène from 400-25 BC).
In an article published in Science, a journal belonging to the group Cellseveral researchers have just delivered the results of a series of research carried out in six French regions: “We wanted to paint the genetic portrait of the Gallic groups, to complete the only data known from archeology., explains Claire-Elise Fischer, paleogenetician at the University of York (England), co-signatory of the article. To do this, the study of 145 individuals, from 27 archaeological sites spread across France, made it possible to obtain 49 complete genomes. “This was not without difficulty given the few bones available. We had to find human remains that had escaped cremation, a common burial practice in the Iron Age“, specifies Claire-Elise Fischer to Science and Future.
Sculptures of severed heads (2nd century BC) from the oppidum of Entremont (Bouches du Rhône). Credits: Leemage/AFP
Thus, in the south of France, DNA samples were taken from the remains of adults in the deposit of “severed heads” from the Gallic site of Cailar (4th century BC) in the Gard, where about fifty human skulls are preserved (read framed), as well as newborns and immatures – an anthropological term used to name the skeletons of individuals under the age of five. As such, work on funerary behavior among the Gauls suggests, particularly since the discovery in 2009 of the necropolis of Urville-Nacqueville, in the department of Manche, that below 10 years, young Gauls were buried, and beyond that, they were cremated.
In the Iron Age, no massive arrivals of outside groups
In the north, the DNA samples were instead taken from fine chariot grave burials. “What these investigations have above all revealed is a homogeneity within the Gallic groups, indicating that in the Iron Age there were no massive arrivals of outside groups as has sometimes been expressed.declares Mélanie Pruvost, coordinator of the National Research Agency (ANR-15-CE27-0001) Ancestra project, the aim of which is to trace the settlement of the territory corresponding to present-day France by studying the impact of each wave of migration from the Neolithic to the Merovingian period.
The variations distinguished between Gallic groups of the Iron Age come from specific cultural and funerary choices, and not from diverse origins. Thus, the people buried in the Greek counters of Cap d’Agde (Hérault) who were able to be examined at the genomic level are not genetically distinct from the rest of the regional population practicing other rites. “We also did not note any significant differences with the Bronze Age groups (2300-800 BC) that preceded those of the Iron Age.summarizes Claire-Elise Fischer. The diversity and interbreeding of the populations of the Bronze Age are found among the Gauls of the Iron Age., continues the paleogeneticist. These mixtures are the result of previous major migrations of groups from sometimes very distant regions, such as those of the first farmers who arrived from the Near East in the Neolithic period, 6000 years ago, whose heritage we still carry in our genome.
The Gauls came from many diversities and interbreeding
The results proposed by this survey reinforce the idea that those called Gauls in the geographical space of what is now France, descended from local populations of the Bronze Age who gradually evolved between regional groups sharing certain traits. common cultures, linked by a network of cultural as well as biological exchanges. In very rare cases, genetic affinities which need to be clarified have also been observed between populations of Languedoc and the Iberian Peninsula, as well as in Normandy, with inhabitants of England, indicating mobility between individual regions. “Details that could not be visible at the archaeological level alone, and that these genetic data, until now almost absent, complete“, adds Marie-France Deguilloux, paleogenetician at the Pacea*-UMR 5199 laboratory, lecturer at the University of Bordeaux. “On the other hand, in the context of the rewriting of history that we have been witnessing in recent times, it is important to remember that the Gauls came from many diversities and interbreeding and that migrations have always been a driving force of development of human beings“.
*Pacea: From Prehistory to the Present: Culture, Environment and Anthropology.
The “severed heads” of the Cailar
In 2003, a depot of weapons and severed heads was unearthed on the Gaulish Iron Age site of Cailar in the Gard. Severed heads being a Gallic ritual practice. Nearly 2,500 human remains have been identified, corresponding to around fifty individuals. Only bone fragments from the head were preserved. The examination of these remains indicated that these heads had long been presented in the open air. If no nailing sign has been identified at the Cailar (in other regions skulls have sometimes been found nailed), traces of circular perforations suggest that some heads had been attached by a link.
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