Statue-menhirs of Occitania: the hard preservation of thousand-year-old rocks

Aged at least 4000 years, the mysterious statue-menhirs are threatened by erosion, warn the curators, anxious in particular to protect those kept in the open air, as in Aveyron or in the Tarn, where they are particularly numerous. In these two departments, where hundreds of copies of these first human-sized anthropomorphic figures known in Western Europe are still sleeping underground, some individuals who discover them want to keep them, as the law authorizes them to do.

In his garage, Jean-Pierre Bascoul shows a two-sided statue-menhir that he found a year and a half ago in a field. “I scraped it a little with the plow,” he regrets, pointing out superficial traces. “I would like her to stay here,” says the 61-year-old farmer, who has already sold another statue-menhir to the small museum in Murat-sur-Vèbre, in the Tarn, but plans to exhibit this at home. new "treasure that belongs to everyone".

The community of communes of the Monts de Lacaune, of which Murat-sur-Vèbre is a member, intends to help it develop an exhibition space protecting this monument, specifies Marie-Christine Granier, in particular in charge of museums in this community. This is already the case for Yvan Garenq, who exhibits in his garden a statue-menhir discovered 45 years ago: “I found it while plowing. She's my guardian angel," he laughs, not hiding his "pride."

“It's better to see the original in the field. Many people come to see her. If it was a copy, there would be fewer people," adds this 88-year-old former farmer who, to better welcome visitors, has installed a wooden table with benches near the monument and its shelter that the community of communes is rebuilding.

To better preserve them, certain statue-menhirs have been placed in a safe place and replaced by copies installed at the place where they had initially stood. And the community of municipalities has just "bought a large car garage" to store originals there, says Ms. Granier who tirelessly pursues her task of raising awareness of the protection of these monuments, also threatened by human action. "On a site, we even engraved 'Marie, I love you,'" she laments. Alain Robert, president of a local association, the Rieumontagné Heritage Research Center, completes this by evoking the case of a farmer who had discovered a statue-menhir “He said to me: “Either you remove that or I put a blast of dynamite. I would like to plow my field”.

Buried or reused for construction, these statues, sculpted between 3,300 and 2,200 BC, were rediscovered from the second half of the 19th century. They have been classified as "feminine", wearing for example necklaces, or "masculine", with a harness, while other attributes (face, belt, hands or feet) are common to both. Beyond their appearance, very little is known of the significance of these monuments appreciated by artists like Pierre Soulages and fashioned in sandstone, granite or diorite. “From the 1970s, interest in these statues increased significantly, as tractors plowing deeper facilitated their rediscovery,” says Robert.

Unfortunately, the sculpted parts of certain statue-menhirs that have remained in the open air tend to fade. “It shows the fragility of these monuments which have been preserved because they have been buried. From the moment they are taken out of the ground, like any archaeological vestige, they deteriorate very quickly", according to Aurélien Pierre, director of the Fenaille museum, in Rodez, which has famous pieces including the emblematic "Dame de Saint-Sernin ". Some 160 statue-menhirs discovered in Haut-Languedoc (Aveyron, Tarn and north-west of Hérault) ranging from a few tens of centimeters to more than two meters in height are officially listed but "hundreds" of others would remain to be discovered, according to Mr. Pierre, buried under the fields or the woods.

Comparable pieces have been found elsewhere in France, Italy or Switzerland, but Haut-Languedoc is one of the areas with the “highest concentration of statue-menhirs” in Western Europe, he adds. This is why Mrs. Granier or Mr. Robert, as well as other heritage defenders, always try to make the population aware of the existence of these monuments, in order to discover others, protect them and "leave them in legacy to future generations.