Site sublacustre du Petit Port
Monument
Site sublacustre du Petit Port, located in Annecy-le-Vieux (Département 74), is a historic monument. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Location
- Annecy-le-Vieux, Département 74, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 45.9048, 6.1566
- Mérimée Reference
- PA00118475
Buried beneath the waters of Lake Annecy, the Petit Port sublacustrine site reveals a Neolithic and Bronze Age village preserved for 5,000 years - one of the best-preserved Alpine palafittes in France.
History
At the bottom of Lake Annecy, between two and five metres below the surface, lies one of Haute-Savoie's best-kept secrets: the Petit Port sublacustrine site, a lakeside settlement whose remains date back several millennia BC. Invisible from the busy shores of Annecy-le-Vieux, this exceptional archaeological site belongs to the large family of Alpine palafittes, the pile-dwelling villages that prehistoric populations built on the shores of lakes to benefit from the fishing resources and natural protection afforded by the water. What sets Petit Port apart from other comparable sites is the remarkable integrity of its stratigraphy. The lake sediments, maintained in anaerobic conditions, have preserved not only the wooden stakes driven into the muddy bottom, but also extremely fragile organic remains: seeds, plant fibres, fragments of worked wood and the bones of domestic and wild animals. These deposits constitute a natural archive of almost journalistic precision on the lifestyles of the farming and pastoral communities that populated the Alpine shores between the Middle Neolithic and the Bronze Age. For archaeologists and enlightened divers alike, the site offers an extraordinary experience. Visiting this protected area is not something to be done lightly: only explorations supervised by underwater archaeologists are permitted, in order to preserve the integrity of a heritage that five thousand years of sedimentation have frozen in place. For the general public, collections from ancient excavations, on display at the Musée-Château d'Annecy, provide an insight into the richness of this sunken world: ceramics, flint tools, bone ornaments and polished bronze axes. The geographical setting enhances the emotion of the place. Lake Annecy, one of the purest in Europe, bathes its shores framed by the Bauges and Bornes massifs. The legendary transparency of its waters - the result of an exemplary clean-up operation carried out in the 1960s - means that on calm days in low light, you can sometimes glimpse from a boat the ghostly outlines of piles stuck in the mud, like a silent echo of five millennia of human history.
Architecture
The architectural concept of the "palafittes" was based on a principle that was both simple and ingenious: planting solid vertical piles in the lake bed to support a platform of planks on which the dwellings rested. At Petit Port, the piles - mainly made of oak, ash and white fir, depending on the stratigraphic level - were driven in regular rows, defining the outlines of rectangular buildings that would have been similar in size to contemporary farmhouses, around six to ten metres long and four to six metres wide. The walls of the dwellings were probably made of wattle and daub - a network of branches and plant stems - covered with a plaster of clay mixed with straw, a technique known as cob. The roofs, which were double-sloped to evacuate the abundant rainfall of the Alpine climate, were probably covered with thatch or birch bark. These perishable materials have left few direct traces, but comparisons with better-documented sites such as Charavines (Isère) or the Swiss palafittes at Zurich allow us to reliably reconstruct the general appearance of these lakeside villages. What makes Petit Port so special is the excellent preservation of the organic layers, made possible by the anoxic lake sediments. Archaeologists have thus been able to identify the remains of burnt walls, collapsed domestic hearths and heaps of food waste (faunal remains, hazelnut shells, cereal seeds), which reveal the intimate geography of these prehistoric homes. The entire site covers an area estimated at several hundred square metres, making Le Petit Port one of the most substantial Palaeolithic sites in the Haute-Savoie department.
Related Figures
Ferdinand Keller — archéologue suisse qui, en 1854, identifia et décrivit les premiers palafittes du lac de Zurich, déclenchant une vague d'investigations lacustres dans toute l'Europe alpine, dont le lac d'AnnecyAdolphe Rabut — érudit savoyard du XIXe siècle, pionnier des recherches archéologiques sur les stations lacustres du lac d'Annecy et correspondant de la Société Savoisienne d'Histoire et d'ArchéologiePaul Bovier-Lapierre — préhistorien actif dans la région alpine au début du XXe siècle, dont les travaux contribuèrent à documenter les gisements lacustres de Haute-SavoieAndré Marguet — archéologue subaquatique du Département des Recherches Archéologiques Subaquatiques et Sous-marines (DRASSM), qui participa aux études méthodiques des palafittes alpins français dans les années 1980-1990Yves Billaud — archéologue spécialiste des sites palafittiques alpins, ayant contribué à la documentation scientifique des gisements sublacustres de Savoie et Haute-Savoie
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Site sublacustre du Petit Port located?
Site sublacustre du Petit Port is located in Annecy-le-Vieux, Département 74 department, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, France.
Is Site sublacustre du Petit Port open to visitors?
Site sublacustre du Petit Port is currently closed to visitors.