Buoux

Buoux is a common French, located in the department of Vaucluse and the area Provence-Alp-Coast of Azure.

Geography

Approximately 8 kilometers in the south of Apt (Sub-prefecture). The main roads crossing the village are D 113.

The territory of the commune is located in the middle of the Luberon, solid mass which culminates with 1124 meters of altitude and constitutes a natural barrier between the valley of the Durance and that of the Calavon. It “is split” by the valley of the Aiguebrun, not far from the combe of Lourmarin. The latter, is necessary tectonic origin, connects Buoux to the combe Bonnieux in the west and Lourmarin in the south.

Buoux is located at the crossroads of two thousand-year-old ways of passage which went from Aix-en-Provence to Apt until the Route of the combe of Lourmarin does not obtain its current layout:

the valley of Aiguebrun, not of required passage for which formerly the combe Lourmarin borrowed.

the way of the Salyens (name without any doubt inherited the federation of Gallic Peuples which dominated the Pays of Aix before the Roman conquest): this difficult way carries out Vaugines, in the south, to the fort of Buoux in north by successively connecting the small valley of Vaunière (southern slope), Crete and the small valley of Greenhouses (northern slope).

Lastly, Buoux is especially famous for its cliff S offering of many climbing ways: those are made of Molasse urgonienne, dating from the Miocène (- 25 to -12 million years) and were used as refuge with the man as of the Préhistoire.

History

The occupation of the valley of Aiguebrun and in particular of the commune of Buoux by the man goes back to the Paléolithique means (Moustérien), like revealed it the Fouille S of the balsam of Peyrards . This vast shelter, length of forty meters and deep on average from 4 to 5 meters, are dug in the Molasse with the foot of a wall slightly overhanging. Its exposure to south-east and its situation at the bottom of a small valley boxed on Right Bank of Aiguebrun made of it a refuge of choice for the Néandertaliens which used it on several occasions as halt of hunting then like permanent habitat.
The site, which visited as of 1808 the naturalist inhabitant of Avignon Esprit Requien in the search of fossil bones, was then excavated, starting from 1865 per Jules de Terris, then by Emile Arnaud (1866 and 1867), Louis Jullian (1884) and Franki Moulin (1900). It was the subject of investigations more pushed between 1902 and 1910 by two notable of the area, Marc Deydier and Frederic Lazard which opened a 3 depth meters cut. It is the professor Henry de Lumley who resumed the excavations and the study of this layer starting from 1955.
The occupation of the site would be between - 130.000 and - approximately 50.000 years. The habitat was to consist according to Henry de Lumley of a 11,50 m length hut on 7 m of depth, leant with the wall and whose site was delimited by a line of large blocks. Several hearths were installed inside.
The material put at the day comprises flint tools which reveal, for a great number, the use of the Méthode Levallois intended to obtain glares with the predetermined forms. The remainders of fauna include the Bouquetin, the horse, the aurochs, the stag, the roe-deer, the marmot, rabbit, wild boar, the brown bear and the wolf, in variable proportions according to the stratigraphic units. Combined with the contributions of the sedimentology, they make it possible to follow the evolution of the active climate over one period of the end of the Glaciation of Riss until the end of the old Würm.
The balsam of Peyrards also delivered some human remainders néandertaliens: 4 Tooth S coming from 3 young adults and an older child of ten years.

It is at the latest with the Neolithic that the settlement is organized not far from this place on the heights of the fort of Buoux. The existence of this Oppidum goes back probably at least to this period. At the time Gallic, this last could be a refuge of Albici. Undoubtedly at the 9th century is born a first village in Saint-Germain, under the current fort. Perhaps it disappears about the middle from the Moyen-âge or more tardily for unknown reasons (demography?).

After 1125 and to the 13th century, Buoux belongs to Pontevès and is attached to the Seigneur S of Apt. It is probably the moment when the medieval fort develops. This one lasts until the 17th century (1660), when thestrong one is demolished in accordance with the policy wanted by Louis XIV. TO SEE PLACES AND MONUMENTS

Administration

Demography

Graph of the evolution of the population 1794-1999

Buoux is a rural district whose population is stabilized after a demographic decline related to the Rural migration at the 19th century and in the first two thirds of the XX {{E}}.

Economy

The commune of Buoux offers several tourist sites and has rural inns and lodgings.

The dominant traditional activities are the breeding of sheep and the bee-keeping.

Buoux is a place of manufacture of goat's milk cheese: this one can still be bought directly with the producing farm.

Places and monuments

Priory Saint-Symphorien (Romance Style, 12th century)
Vault Sainte-Marie (Romance Style, 13th century), located in the cemetery
Castle of Buoux (not of visits, site reserved for the school reception)
Extremely of Buoux: Late antiquity/Early middle ages (to be defined), the Romance Middle Ages, the Gothic Middle Ages, modern time

The Fort of Buoux (Vaucluse), archaeological program, 2007-2017.

The Fort of Buoux (Vaucluse) been the subject of a program of study initiated by the commune and financed by its care and the CG 84 and State aid. The direction of the study was entrusted to the Laboratory Medieval archeology Mediterranean-CNRS. This phase is preliminary to a restoration and development. Started in April 2007, the program was inaugurated by a work on the medieval church. Ruined since XVIIIe S., the building was partly hidden under the debris coming from rises and the vault. The chorus was released in the years 1970 by teams of young people. The complement carried out made it possible to clear the nave completely and to highlight a complex architecture presenting several stages of construction as well as appendices added during the Middle Ages.

If a section of wall suggests an old phase whose dating remains to be specified (late Antiquity or Early middle ages), essence is from the times Romance and Gothic. The directed Romance building, built out of hardcores sitting, was probably covered with a frame and had a single nave as well as side doors opening one in the south and the second in north. The chorus preserves an altered pavement whose attribution with the Romance Middle Ages remains to be confirmed. To the level of the span of chorus, two pilasters installed and leant with the gouttereaux walls indicate the probable existence of a wall combs surmounting the roof.

A rehandling consisted in creating unporche in the southern wall and in the vicinity U chorus. This access offered a communication with a supposed side chapel whose starter of the circular semi bedside is perceptible. This plan will be transformed thereafter, the absidiole being replaced by a rectilinear wall. The construction leant with the church had seems T it an access opening towards the west. The walling of one or the two doors north and south of the original Romance plan could be walled at the time of these rehandlings.

Does a Gothic stage indicate the replacement of the frame (following a fire?) by an installed vault. The reinforcement necessary of the frail Romance walls involved the construction of several external buttresses visible in north. In the south, with these devices could be preferred the principle of a long arched room playing a part of contrebutement similar. Inside, with the stone linings of size containing of the blind blind arcades to the broken profile the Romance walls thus taken out of vice reinforce. At the top of the linings, a cornice marked the departure of the vault whose many archstones were found in fillings. The arcs beams divided the nave into three spans. The creation of a door, open towards the west and shifted in the frontage, could be allotted to this phase dated from XIIIe S.

It is during the modern time (XVIe S.?) that the nave was separate in two spaces consecutively with the construction of a partition-wall whose function will have to be confirmed. One thinks of a distinction directly related to the worship: spaces castral and parochial, spaces intended to accommodate the faithful catholics and Protestants? The probability of a reduction of the volume of the church due to a reduction of the population is not drawn aside, nor a degraded state of construction having obliged to maintain the population in a reduced space. Conservation of a bench built and leant with the partition-wall side chorus, as well as the probable existence of wood stalls will provide arguments helping interpretations.

Outside, an arched building will be leant with the church towards the west: it is shifted in order to leave free the passage leading to the Western door.

The study of the church will be prolonged during the autumn, the architect as a chief of the MH having wished, with the support of the regional Conservation of the MH, the clearing of the accesses useful to a better formulation of the project of restoration.

The program profits from the collaboration of the University of Provence, the University of Stuttgart and the IGN which drew up general and detailed statements of a great quality (scanner and raised to the laser tacheometer).

Small valley of Aiguebrun and way of the Salyens
Cliff of Molasse, one of the most beautiful sites of the List of the sites of climbing in France

Personalities related to the commune

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