There is little sign in the Arroux valley of upstanding earthwork sites of Iron Age or Roman date of the kind familiar in marginal and upland areas of longstanding pasture elsewhere in Europe. Extensive cultivation up to the 19th century has evidently resulted in progressive modification of the landscape, effectively erasing any earlier remains. The one notable exception in the three micro-areas selected for survey was at Chantal, where remains of a Gallo-Roman building range still survive in a plot of woodland (Section 5.1.1), of which there is, however, relatively little in the three study areas.
Topographic surveys were therefore only undertaken at three sites: at Chantal itself; at Chevannes, where well-preserved platforms can be observed around the modern farm (Section 5.2.4); and at Poil, the last to facilitate the reconciliation of air photographic data with geophysical plots (Section 5.4.1). There is little doubt that, as elsewhere in France, systematic survey of the extensive woodland areas on the slopes and higher reaches of the Morvan would reveal upstanding earthworks and other remains of archaeological sites, as indeed more recent work around the source of the Yonne has demonstrated (Creighton et al. 2007).
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Last updated: Wed Oct 29 2008