Saint-Germain-en-Laye (Yvelines). A year devoted to the Bronze Age, it was necessary to this initiative of the National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) to put at the heart of the historical story this period still too little known by the general public, junction between the Neolithic and the Iron Age. From Nemours (Seine-et-Marne) to Moulins (Allier), the exhibitions devoted to this era extending from 2300 to 800 BC to punctuate the inrap season, but it is indeed the Museum of National Archeology (Man) of Saint-Germain-en-Laye which is its epicenter, with “the masters of fire”, which wants to lay the milestones of a new conception of the bronze age.
“The design time has been long and complex, Relates Rose-Marie Mousseaux, Director of the Museum. Forty years after the last summary exhibition on the subject, the time has come to bring visitors to a new “Bronze Age”. »» Driven by a four-headed scientific police station (Cyril Marcigny and Rebecca Peake for INRAP, Rolande Simon for the Man and Stefan Wirth of Burgundy-Europe University), the exhibition updates knowledge over the period, knowledge strongly renewed for about fifteen years.
Commercial corridors
The course almost marries that of a permanent journey, chaining four themes which condense the essentials of what we know about the then societies: the technological innovation of the bronze alloy; trade and contacts between different regions; the importance of the sun and the sky in the conception of the world; and the occupation of the territory. This last part offers a fairly new perspective on a daily life still little known: “There is a distorting filter of archeology, notes Claude Mordant, president of the Association for the Promotion of Research on the Bronze Age, partner of the exhibition. We only find only exceptional, prestigious objects, deposits. »»
Deposit of Little Laugère, Génelard (Saône-et-Loire), 1200-1100 BC, bronze and stone.
© Chalon-sur-Saône, Living Museum Denon /J. Beg.
From the introductory room, the objective of renewing scientific discourse to the general public is manifest, with a very clear map presenting the major cultural areas of the Bronze Age, a chronology superimposing these different areas, and the presence of a term: “Bronzization”. Forged by the Danish archaeologist Helle Vandkilde ten years ago, this concept describes an era of first globalization, where the need to have tin and copper to obtain bronze traces the first large commercial corridors, from Europe in the Middle East.
The means allocated to this exhibition, on the other hand, appear not to the height of its scientific ambition, as museography is struggling to enhance the unscred vestiges of the Bronze Age. Because if a few pieces immediately capture the attention of visitors, such as the intriguing gold cone discovered in the middle of the 19th century in Vienne, the route is full of furniture sets, deposits or vestiges from the much less spectacular metallurgical industry. It is a shame that the objective objects do not benefit from a short and individualized lighting capable of making them eloquent.
The route continues outside, with the presentation of the replica of the Dover boat, a wreck found in England in 1992, and the creation of a bronze age garden presenting the cultivated species 3,500 years ago: two original experimental approaches which should seduce visitors.
