If Valais were not some 700 kilometers from Armorica, one would almost imagine finding a trace of Obelix alongside the impressive line of menhirs discovered in June in the Rhône plain.
However, no trace of the Gallic sculptor has been uncovered by Swiss researchers from the Cantonal Archeology Office.
In addition to the distance, the chronology hardly lent itself to such a rapprochement: much older than our diehard resistance fighters of the middle of the 1st century BC.
AD, the standing stones recently unearthed in the Valais commune of Saint-Léonard date back to the heart of the Neolithic era.
That is at least two millennia earlier.
Read also: Megaliths: the rush to the west
In the center of the largest French-speaking canton in Switzerland, a preventive archeology operation led, at the beginning of the summer, to the discovery of 13 menhirs, lined up in tight rows. Hidden from the surface of the world under more than two meters of earth, they resurfaced during a construction site for a future district of villas in Saint-Léonard, in the south of the country. An
"exceptional"
discovery
, according to the municipality: already known in Switzerland for its formidable underground lake - formed by the erosion of a gypsum cavity, several tens of thousands of years ago -, Saint-Léonard can now be proud of having sheltered a remarkable line of medioliths.
Less imposing than the megalithic stars of Stonehenge or the proud alignments of Carnac, the standing stones discovered in Valais at the beginning of summer, admittedly, only reach halfway up to an adult man.
But nothing more was needed to delight regional archaeologists, for whom the importance of each vestige is measured by its historical value rather than by the accumulated centimeters.
The thirteen menhirs of Saint-Léonard, in Valais (Switzerland)
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“We have a lot of Neolithic remains in the region,
enthusiastically recalls François Mariethoz, cantonal archaeologist deputy at the Office of Archeology of Valais.
Habitat sites, tombs, ceramic furniture… From the Middle Neolithic to the recent Neolithic, there was real activity in this part of Switzerland ”
, he lists. Better still, the 13 menhirs of Saint-Léonard are part of a local context already known for its prehistoric heritage and its standing stones. The geographical area indeed corresponds to the area identified by archaeologists as the Neolithic culture of Cortaillod, present in central and western Switzerland and as far as Haute-Savoie between the 5th and 4th millennium BC. Engraved rocks had in particular been discovered on the land of the town in 1974, while in Sion, three kilometers downstream, the dolmens of a Neolithic necropolis had been identified in 1964, at the place called Petit-Chasseur. . The find of the 13 menhirs of Saint-Léonard does not constitute, therefore,
"not a real surprise"
for François Mariethoz, in view of the region's rich Neolithic heritage, even if it nonetheless remains
“extraordinary and very rare”
.
Their meaning, on the other hand, is less obvious.
Read also: Discovery in Switzerland of a Bronze Age village submerged in a lake
A still undetermined function
This lithic set is, for the time being, dated from the middle of the 5th to the 3rd millennium BC, even if
“nothing either allows us to rule out a possible recent dating at the very beginning of the Bronze Age, around 1000 BC. AD "
, specifies François Mariethoz. If the chronology of the site is thus promised to refine, the question of its function remains unanswered. Do we have to do with a round of astronomical stones at Stonehenge?
"It's not a circle, but a straight line
," says archaeologist François Mariethoz.
This alignment could have a link with the graves discovered in the vicinity. It could have had a social or religious role, and serve as a marker between projected or real territories. It could for example repre
s
enter the boundary between the living and the dead, or between land and water. ”
So many possible relationships with space that emerged during the Neolithic, at the time when communities settled around the first villages.
Read also: The menhirs of Carnac want to become a legend
Archaeologists are therefore not going to take out of their hat a mysterious function of an opaque arrangement of erect stones, but seek to understand the nature of the site. This reflection could oscillate in one direction or the other depending on the details provided by the radiocarbon dating of charcoal extracted from the excavation; it is expected within a few months. Moved from the excavation site, the menhirs are being restored by the specialist services of the canton of Valais. Documented before their dismantling, the stones will rise again, as soon as possible, on a new location. After thousands of years of oblivion, it will then be time for the general public to “discover” these very old guardians of Valais.