On the small Breton island of Béniguet at the tip of France’s Atlantic coast, archaeologists hope to raise awareness of household waste trapped in the dune since the Bronze Age. A challenge that is both scientific and human in nature.
“We collect the rubbish of people who lived there 4,000 years ago,” explains Yvan Pailler, an archaeologist at the University of Western Brittany (UBO), in front of the excavation site. “This will allow us to analyze their economy and their way of life and find out what species of animals they bred…”
Since 2021, there has been a special permit for excavations on this 60-hectare island in the Molène archipelago, which has been classified as a nature reserve since 1993 and is therefore not allowed to be entered.
On the water’s edge, in a square of a few square meters dug into the dune, students and archaeologists are exploring a huge shell mound that was trapped by the dune for thousands of years before it was uncovered by a storm in 2014. The site contains several layers of rubble, distributed in layers, the oldest of which date back to the Neolithic period.
“Climate Archive”
The most common species in this pile of ancestral waste is the limpet (or limpet), that famous shell shaped like a Chinese hat. This small grazing snail, which lives on rocky shores, has been eaten by islanders for thousands of years.
“We will be able to use these small limpets as climate archives and trace the environmental and climatic history of the region,” emphasizes Jean-François Cudennec, marine biologist who dedicated his dissertation to the limpets found at this site.
By analyzing the shells, it is actually possible to outline the history of the women and men who collected them. “We can determine the water temperature just before the animal dies,” explains Mr Cudennec. “This information will tell us what time of year these people went limpet fishing.”
This then makes it possible to know “the seasonality of the occupation of the site” because “if we collected limpets in the garbage heaps all year round, that means that people were there all year round,” the researcher adds.
Periods of long-term or episodic settlement have been identified over the centuries. “We have both huge, long-lasting installations and small moments of life sealed by the dune massif,” describes Clément Nicolas, archeology researcher at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research).
As a specialist in societies from the 3rd and 2nd millennium BC. In the 4th century BC, this archaeologist hopes to learn more about the way of life of the Bell Beaker Men, a culture widespread throughout Europe at the time, whose origins and rapid spread remain controversial.
“Back to basics”
“We know this culture above all through the dolmens, the tombs,” like in Carnac in Brittany (west), explains Mr. Nicolas. “We are starting to get to know the habitats. And there we have the bell-shaped trash cans. This in itself is a small revolution on the scale of Brittany.”
Especially since the lime-rich dune preserves the bones very well, in contrast to acidic soils. “Our dream would be to find a grave” that would make it possible to trace the origins of these populations using DNA analysis, reveals the archaeologist.
The excavations, which are financed in particular by the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB) and the UBO, could therefore continue for several years despite the spartan living conditions on the island, without water or electricity.
“It’s a return to basics, a challenge to go beyond yourself,” smiles Éric Bouillé, 34, a former archeology student from Quebec.
Compared to other archaeological sites, “it is the most special, the most spiritually difficult in terms of daily life, the way of life,” confirms Lina Guelouza, an archeology student at the University of Paris-I. Panthéon Sorbonne, who nevertheless says he has “a crush on the island”.