Monumental tombs from the early Bronze Age have been found in Capendu, near Carcassonne.

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Pascal Druelle / Inrap

  • Inrap archaeologists, specialists in preventive archeology, have found three tombs nearly 4,000 years old in Capendu, in Aude, on a site that will soon host a shopping center.

  • Human remains have been extracted from this part of a larger necropolis, as well as ornaments typical of the campaniform culture, which had not yet been unearthed in this region.

Since last week, a shopping center has emerged east of Capendu, near Carcassonne.

Customers who soon buy their yogurts and crisps there will walk over the remains of a very old necropolis.

Before giving way to the cranes, archaeologists from Inrap (National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research) found on the Aude site three monumental tombs nearly 4,000 years old.

An aerial view of the Capendu excavation site, near Carcassonne.

- Pascal Druelle / Inrap

Two others had already been discovered in 2008 on adjacent land, during a previous diagnosis by Inrap, but they had not yielded as many clues.

“They date from the beginning of ancient bronze, between -2,000 and -1,800 BC, explains Romain Marsac, scientific manager of the site for Inrap, whose mission is precisely to excavate sites upstream of development work.

They form a beautiful funeral complex.

Bone and shell ornaments have been found which are typical of this period.

"

Unique in the region

This discovery is all the more precious as it is unique in the region.

If the land of the Aude had already restored testimonies of the Middle Neolithic (around -4,000), it retained until this summer the vestiges of the campaniform culture, to which the site of Capendu belongs, vast of 3,500 square meters.

Of the three monuments studied this summer, one, located only 50 cm below the current ground, was severely damaged by modern agricultural work.

The other two, deeper (up to one meter), take the form of circular enclosures with a diameter of 12 to 15 m, with walls one meter wide made up of a superposition of sandstone and pebbles.

A shell pendant found on the Capendu excavation site, near Carcassonne.

- Pascal Druelle / Inrap

In the center of each enclosure: a safe tomb, with large sandstone slabs.

One of them delivered human remains and ornaments.

"The graves were certainly looted very long ago," continues Romain Marsac.

There were surely some precious bronze objects inside.

As the monumental ensemble should not go unnoticed and word of mouth is as old as words, some dishonest people have used it a long, long time ago.

But they left just enough clues for contemporary archaeologists to date the necropolis.

The skull of an adult woman, a child's mandible, a few fragments of long bones (forearms?) And phalanges, all gathered in the same grave, have stood the test of time, as have some fragments of ceramic.

They are the subject of in-depth studies in Inrap laboratories.

The site itself is gradually disappearing under the new supermarket.

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