Parures annulaires massives à décor incisé du Bronze moyen au Nord-Ouest de la France (Bretagne, Pays de la Loire, Basse-Normandie). Pour une remise en question du type de Bignan
Authors: Nordez Marilou 
Published: April 2018

During the Middle Bronze Age, metalwork is mostly characterized by the spread of original, massive annular ornaments : bracelets and anklets, bearing rich incised designs. With palstaves, those annular ornaments are the main artefacts found within the hoards of this period in western France. J. Briard (1965) first individualized these objects, naming them Bignan-type bracelets after a hoard in Morbihan, where eighteen of them were discovered. Such specific personal ornaments have since been vaguely named thus when discovered, mostly in hoards of the Armorican Massif. It now seems necessary to reconsider this designation, which associates objects that are at times very different and to take into account their specific characteristics from a morphological, ornamental, technological, contextual and regional point of view. This paper, which is the result of ongoing doctoral research, aims to propose a new and original typology for such massive annular ornaments and highlight different regional groups. Their production and burying appear as a widespread phenomenon in Atlantic Europe, also expanding beyond that area. This study also tries to evaluate the role of North-Western France within this wider trend. A historiographical assessment illustrates the evolution of the bracelet issue throughout research regarding the Bronze Age. Then, in order to propose a new analysis of these massive annular ornaments, a comprehensive database was compiled, from museums and bibliographic data. This study focuses on the five hundred and seventy-five bracelets and anklets found in Brittany, Pays de la Loire, Normandy, Poitou-Charentes, Aquitaine and Île-de-France. Fifty from Southern England are also used for comparison. Armorica (corresponding to the French administrative regions of Bretagne, Pays de la Loire and Basse-Normandie) is a relatively homogeneous geographic area as regards the type of production and the context. Concerning the context, hoards are generally stereotypical, containing essentially palstaves and/ or massive annular ornaments. Concerning the type of production, plano-convex or concavo-convex sections constitute the main shape, which may be decorated with patterns organized in symmetric panels, or without any decoration at all. Two hundred and eighty-seven massive annular ornaments are also known in other regions of the corpus. However, they seem to differ from the Armorican type in their morphological or/ and decorative features and present their own local characteristics. Two other groups can be identified : the first one around the lower and middle Seine Basin, and the second focused on Central-Western and South-Western France. We now have to determine the common and distinctive features existing between the areas of concentration of these bracelets and try to unveil the different mechanisms of production, use, trade and burial. Careful study of the morphological and ornamental aspects of these annular ornaments, their geographic distribution and discovery contexts, enables a renewed classification to be proposed as well as a description of several production groups. The different geographic areas studied here present preferential criteria of morphological and ornamental features, following technical, symbolical and aesthetic choices, implying a review of data concerning the typology and terminology of the Bignan-type bracelets. Morphological criteria of bracelets and anklets will be placed at the centre of this study, especially the general shape (penannular, joined or annular), section shape (plano-convex, concavo-convex, biconvex, quadrangular, triangular or diamond-shaped), and, to a lesser extent, the shape of the extremities. These typological elements can inform us directly about procedures in the operational chain of bracelet production, and their variations from one region to another. Technological and morphological aspects are both obviously linked. Particular attention will be paid to the incised decoration : indeed, geometric patterns represented on the bracelets seem to be subjected to some codes, but only part of these codes can be understood. Precise analysis of the organization and shape of patterns have delivered convincing results showing regional and micro-regional preferences. Depositing processes will also be closely studied, in the light of recent discoveries for which the context is well known, such as the hoard of Saint-Lumine-de-Clisson, Loire-Atlantique (Boulud-Gazo et al., 2012), Domloup, Ille-et-Vilaine (Sicard, 2012), or Trégueux, Côtes-d''Armor (Aubry, 2012). Valuable information is supplied by the rare funerary contexts, which inform us, in particular, about the way these personal ornaments were worn. The necropolis of Ouches (Auzay, Vendée) constitutes an important data source : twenty-four bracelets and anklets were found in their initial position, worn by both men and women (Lourdaux and Gomez, 1998). These discoveries allow the nature of the cultural practice behind the production and depositing of the massive annular ornaments to be considered. This paper attempts to gather and synthesize the current state of knowledge about massive annular ornaments of the Middle Bronze Age. An accurate classification is proposed, using different criteria that help us define three regional groups. These promising results are a first step, raising issues that I will further develop in my thesis. The typo-chronology will be refined and applied to a wider geographic area, technological concerns will be developed and hypotheses tested by archaeological experimentation.