Mysterious ruins emerge in the middle of a Normandy forest in a place called ‘Bois-l’Abbé’ near the town of Eu. Initial archaeological research conducted on the site in the 19th century suggests the presence of a monumental Roman sanctuary. In the early 2000s, when the site was being extensively looted, new archaeological excavations were undertaken by archaeologist Etienne Mantel.
The construction site of a secondary school in the commune of Riom in the Puy-de-Dôme department is providing archaeologists with an opportunity to excavate the remains of an ‘indigenous farm’ dating from the 2nd century BCE. This Gallic agricultural settlement is reminiscent of the ‘Pâtural’ site discovered a few kilometres away in the 1980s.
These sites, contemporary with the first ‘capital’ of the Arverni people (the Gallic settlement of Aulnat-Gandaillat), bear witness to a territorial organisation common to the whole of Gaul. Little by little, the entire organisation of the Gallic occupation of the Limagne plain in Auvergne is being revealed…
On the outskirts of Caen, archaeologists are studying the remains left behind by hundreds of civilians who took refuge in an underground quarry to protect themselves from Allied bombing during the Normandy landings. In June 1944, Yvette Lethimonier was twelve years old when she took refuge with her family and several hundred other people in this vast underground shelter. Today, Yvette is back in this refuge.
On a beach in Normandy, unprecedented archaeological discoveries lead a team of archaeologists on the trail of a Celtic people whose culture seems to differ from that of their neighbours in the rest of Gaul. Beneath the fine sand, exceptionally well-preserved remains are gradually coming to light. Time is running out before marine erosion destroys forever the last traces of the men and women who lived here between the 2nd and 1st centuries BC.
After its conquest by Julius Caesar, Gaul became Roman and gradually adopted the culture of its occupiers. New towns sprang up, while wine-growing spread throughout the countryside. This process was particularly rapid in the Lyon region.
