Roquepertuse

Roquepertuse on the commune of Velaux in the Rhone delta, is the name of a modest plate of surface, overhanging the valley of the Arc.

Its notoriety is due to the old discovery of statues (two “warrior-heroes sitting as a tailor”, a bird of prey, a bicephalous head of Hermes) and fragments of stone gantries, which a long time characterized this site like a sanctuary sallien (or salyen) of IIe century before the Christian era.

One owes the first excavation of the site to the count Henry de Gérin-Ricard, who discovered by chance the first statues of the “warriors sitting” in 1860. An excavation campaign was spread out then over a ten years period, 1917 with 1927, and made it possible to put at the day the structures associated soon with a sanctuary. This last, allotted to the Celto-Ligurians, was initially dated from the Roman conquest day before.

A reinterpretation of the sitted style of the warriors made that the archeologists privilege today an older origin for these statues, which would go back at least to Ve century before the Christian era (at the end of the first age of iron or at the beginning of the period laténienne).

In addition, the excavations which were carried out since 1989 showed that the site - perhaps a sanctuary in the beginning - had become a center of important habitat in IIIe century. This protohistoric “agglomeration”, including/understanding a Oppidum and a habitat in terraces in the south (“village of slope”) knew a violent destruction at the beginning of IIe century. In its context, the use or the re-employment of the statues is not clear.

The exclusive characterization of the site of Roquepertuse as a sanctuary celto-Ligurian was thus abandoned. The principal found archaeological “parts” with Roquepertuse are visible with the Museum of Mediterranean archeology of Marseilles.

See too

Entremont
Salyens

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