Le Gros-Bost à Saint-Méard-de-Drône (Dordogne)

ABSTRACT The site of Gros-Bost at Saint-Méard-de-Drône (Dordogne) has been known since the end of the last century and C. Chevillot published an important quantity of material from it. In 1994 a trial diagnostic dig was carried out on part of the rampart which had already been opened by illegal diggers. The interest of the artefacts, solely Artenacien, and indications of structures revealed by F. Didierjean's aerial photographs justified further exploration of the site in 1995. The stages of the building or repairing of the rampart are not easily situated chronologically but the material is confirmed as belonging exclusively to the Artenac ceramic style. Inside the camp it has been possible to locate a palisade, visible on the aerial photographs, whereas on the contrary a rectangular structure remained undiscovered. The 14C dates indicate use of the rampart from the beginning to the middle of the third millennium, with the exception of one date which is clearly too recent. Gros-Bost is consequently a site having architectural, cultural and chronological characteristics close to those of the site of the Camp at Challignac (Charente). Contemporaneity with the Bell-Beaker culture is obvious — as on the site of Diconche at Saintes (Charente-Maritime) — but relations with the Early Bronze Age can also be suggested.