Between 2012 and 2015, scientific excavations were performed at “Les Bagnoles”, in the territory of L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, Dept. Vaucluse (France), under the direction of S. van Willigen. A team of the IPAS (Basel) participated at the excavation and was in charge of sieving the sediments. Since 2013, 6.2 tons of sediment have been sieved. The site is located in the flat and formerly partly-wet Rhône valley near Avignon. Many structures belonging to the Neolithic Chasséen culture, mainly pits, were excavated. Almost all of the structures lie on dry ground, and have yielded an extremely poor spectra of charred plant remains because of heavy erosion events connected to this fluvial environment.
In 2014, a well was discovered and excavated, followed by two further wells in 2015. The well fillings are secondary infilling episodes after their period of use. In the deepest layers of these wells we have encountered waterlogged deposits with excellent preservation of the plant remains. Storing of the samples in cold-chambers and careful wet-sieving with wash-over (still in progress) allowed the discovery of very rich plant spectra. These have multiplied our knowledge on useful, but also on other wild plants of the period considered, and they show extremely clearly the added value of waterlogged preservation when reconstructing plant use. They are also of special importance since there exists multiple strands of evidence for cultural and material exchange between this region and the Alpine Foreland areas with their world-famous lake-dwellings.
Five C14-datings of the lower fillings (the lowest 2 m) of the oldest well gave all the same dates of a calibrated age of around 4250 cal BC, which brings us to the conclusion that the well shafts were deliberately filled very quickly after their abandonment. The two slightly younger wells, excavated in 2015, contain larger amounts of ruminant dung, enabling therefore also insights into ruminant foddering practices. Besides the rich plant remains spectrum, the well fillings also contained large amounts of excellently preserved insect remains and considerably large amounts of bones of small vertebrates – including fish.
We will present the first archaeobotanical results and also have a look at future research with this extremely valuable material.