page_title: Bibracte
section_title: Battlements
hierarchical_section_title: Bibracte / Organization / Battlements
caption_attribution_description: Porte du Rebout, oppidum de Bibracte, France.
context_page_description: Bibracte, a Gallic oppidum or fortified settlement, was the capital of the Aedui and one of the most important hillforts in Gaul. It was situated near modern Autun in Burgundy, France. The material culture of the Aedui corresponded to the Late Iron Age La Tène culture.
  In 58 BC, at the Battle of Bibracte, Julius Caesar's armies defeated the Helvetii 16 miles south of the fort. In 52 BC, Vercingetorix was proclaimed head of the Gaulish coalition at Bibracte. A few decades after the Roman conquest of Gaul, Bibracte was abandoned in favour of Autun, 25 kilometres away. Once abandoned, Bibracte remained undisturbed and unexamined until discovered by modern archaeology.
  Jacques Gabriel Bulliot initiated the first excavations at the site between 1867 and 1895. His nephew Joseph Déchelette, author of a famous Manuel d'Archéologie, continued the excavations between 1897 and 1907.
  The modern site known as Mont Beuvray is generally identified as ancient Bibracte. The site straddles the borders of the French départements of Nièvre and Saône-et-Loire in Burgundy. The site is an archaeological park at the centre of a protected forest.
context_section_description: Bibracte was protected by strong Murus Gallicus style battlements, which excavations have been able to reconstruct. The city had a progression of two different surrounding walls and at least five restorations of the inner surrounding wall, revealed, among other things, by the study of the Rebout gate. Surprisingly, the inner encircling wall was constructed after the outer wall. The city, therefore, shrank in area from 200 to 135 hectares (494 to 334 acres).
  The first wall (the internal wall on the map below), discovered by Bulliot, is a Murus Gallicus that delimits an area of 135 hectares for a length of 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) per battlement. It is estimated that construction of the wall required more than 10,000 cubic meters of wood, between 10,000 and 20,000 cubic meters of earth and about thirty tons of iron.
  The second wall, surprisingly outside the first, encircles an area of 200 hectares and was the subject of research beginning in 1992 for initial probing. This archeological research revealed that the battlement had had a height between four and five meters (13 and 16 feet) without its yet-unknown top (e.g., palisades or towers) and an identical depth, and was preceded by a ditch between 2 and 4 meters (7 and 13 feet) deep and between 6 and 10 meters (20 and 33 feet) wide. A study was conducted between 1995 and 2002 with many probes along with those by the University of Vienna. The researchers were able to ascertain that this battlement was a Murus Gallicus that had been dismantled in order to construct the inner wall. The dating, however, remains imprecise, and places this event during the 2nd century. These excavations also updated a postern to the level of Porrey, which is the only one currently known for Murus Gallicus type fortifications.
  The battlement is punctuated by about fifteen gates, including the famous Gate of Rebout (20 meters (66 feet) in width and 40 meters (131 feet) in depth). The gate of Rebout was the first location excavated by Bulliot, where he worked for nine weeks, and was the first site for new excavations from 1984 to 1986 which also studied the ditches adjoining the battlements. These excavations revealed five levels of different restorations, including a palisade from the Neolithic Era (dated with carbon-14). The latter has been the object of a reconstruction since 1996 which currently marks the entry into the old oppidum. At the present time, research has not been able to detect a trace of a method for locking the gate or a defensive device for it. Some hypotheses have advanced the idea of a double gate surmounted by a wooden guard tower like that of the Manching oppidum, but nothing has yet confirmed this.
  The recent research on the battlements, since 2005, has concentrated on a line of fortification downhill from the Gate of Rebout. Dating seems to indicate that this construction took place after that of the gate and therefore constituted an advance fortification. It will be studied over the course of the next excavations. At the same time, some aristocratic tombs have been discovered between the two lines of battlements.
caption: The Rebout gate, a reconstruction of a murus gallicus
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