THE PROTOHISTORY

The semi-sedentarization will continue during the period when protohistory begins  1 with the copper age (3000 to 2200 BC). It is a period of transition between the lithic and bone industries and that of the period when man begins to complete his own tools with objects in worked copper. This production is characteristic of the late Neolithic and the nascent bronze metallurgical industry. Due to the accelerating demography thanks to the transformations of this period, the first open villages and the installation of structured tribal clans were born. The man who treads the current territory of the village during these more or less long periods begins to settle down.

 

From the copper period, no site is listed because of the important works which have upset the land on the whole of the meander. On the one hand, the construction of the Paris le Havre railway line from the middle of the 19th century and the work for the extraction of aggregates without any preventive archaeological prospecting being put in place. Only the testimonies of the employees who had in their hands cut tools, tusks and mammoth teeth excavated during the aggregate recovery work.

 

From the Bronze Age period (2200 to 750 BC) today researchers and historians no longer speak of an invasion but of a cumulative migration of Protoceltic peoples. This civilization remained in the shadow of researchers and historians for a long time. We will be satisfied to designate it by the terracotta funeral urns containing ashes and charred bones entitled Civilization of the Culture of the Fields of Urns.

 

The mastery of metallurgy is at the origin of the first large, intense and complex economic exchanges based on production and distribution covering vast territories. If technology travels, man is its driving force and with it the culture of different peoples spreads. These exchanges favored the first great migrations of populations from central Europe in the 8th and 7th century BC. These so-called Celtic populations (keltoi) 2. For Greek authors and “Galli” by Latin authors are in fact the first historians to speak of them in terms of partisan testimony. These authors of so-called civilized nations pass judgment as barbarians on the Celtic peoples. The first Celtic migration will be grouped under the culture of Hallstatt. This Celtic culture marks the first Iron Age. It is based on a princely and warrior aristocracy without political unity. In the 4th and 3rd century BC, the migration of Celtic tribes from the Tène period resulted in a partial sedentarization of the population on the belvedere and in the Seine valley.

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Only preventive archaeological excavations on a site mark an occupation of the Tène near the river and demonstrate that it, along with other sites on the Seine axis, will be a corridor for economic and cultural exchanges and will be one of the determining elements. for the establishment and sedentarization of man in his proximity. Celtic civilization is essentially rural, agricultural and warlike. Land use becomes more intense but the habitat always remains scattered or in the form of small open villages.

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1 Period which betrays history on the three ages of metals (Copper, Bronze, Iron)

2 Name given by Greek historians and geographers while Roman historians will use the term Gaul (Galli).