Santoche

Santoche is a common French, located in the department of the Doubs and the area Franche-Comté.

The inhabitants of Santoche are called Santochois .

Geography

History

Administration

Demography

Places and monuments

Place and visits:

The vestiges of the dolmen are visible in a clearing on a height with the variation of the village of Santoche (close to Clerval) . One easily reaches it by a way suitable for motor vehicles (Soye direction) or by a pedestrian path traced in the forest. To follow the arrows from the village. On the spot, a panel gives all the explanations necessary. The flagstones of the monument are reversed and broken, but it is the dolmen best preserved of Franche-Comté. In 1969, a meticulous archaeological excavation partially released this tomb and its paved esplanade. The site is classified historic building since 1974. It belongs to the commune of Santoche.

a 5000 year old monument:

The dolmen of Santoche is one of the 18 megaliths of this type discovered to date in Franche-Comté. Built 5000 years ago, it is the oldest monument of the department. It acted in the beginning of a collective vault where deaths were buried and where could be held a worship. The enormous flagstones of cover sheltered a rectangular room of 1,80 m by 1,90 m where the archeologists found the remainders of at least 22 individuals and the small objects deposited at their sides. One of the vertical flagstones of the dolmen was perforated of a circular opening (port-hole) of a diameter of approximately 40 centimetres.

a Neolithic village:

The presence of this tomb indicates that a human community perhaps forming a village, lived in the vicinity immediate. The dolmen was used as tomb during nearly thousand years until the Bronze Age. At the time Gallo-Roman the room of the dolmen was used as temporary shelter for the shepherds, the hunters and the travellers. Later the flagstones of covers were voluntarily reversed and the site covered by a heap with épierrement.

Among the archaeological furniture collected in 1969 in the excavation of the dolmen, the arrowheads, blade, and flint scraper, a stone axe, a pinhead in bone, fragments of ceramics vase. These objects of the daily life indicate that the men who built the megaliths were already at a advanced stage of civilization. These men, who lived at the time known as Average Neolithic era, had weapons, ornaments, very elaborate tools, out of stone, wood or bone. They started to know to also manufacture small objects out of bronze, did a little culture and breeding.

Legends and superstitions:

It was still believed, it has been 100 years that the dolmens were furnace bridges where the Gallic druids practiced human sacrifices. It is known well today that the dolmens are tombs which go back to several thousands of years before the Gallic ones.

At the XVIIe century, the dolmen of Santoche was called “Pierre with the marriages”. Indeed, the tradition wanted that the days of their weddings, the new grooms come in procession to the dolmen.

Then the bride was to go up on one of the stones and to be held upright on a foot. All the guests of the wedding were to then embrace it. If the habit were not respected, the couple could not be happy said one. Other ritual the least innocent was held the nights of full moon on the stones of the dolmen. It is told that the clergy, irritated by these pagan practices, made break and reverse these stones. Nowadays, it still happens that curious pilgrims come to devote themselves to strange night ceremonies. It is also told that the hypnotizers of the surroundings come to reinforce their capacities and ressourcer on the stones of the dolmen

Personalities related to the commune

See too

Common of Doubs

External bonds

Santoche on the site of the national geographical Institute
Santoche on the site of INSEE
Santoche on the site of Quid
Localization of Santoche on a chart of France and communes bordering
Plane on Santoche on Mapquest

Random links: