Maures Archeaology travel guide

Bronze Age menhirs, Celto-Ligurian strongholds, the remains of Roman villas… There are numerous traces of the successive occupants of the area to be discovered, both in museums and on site.

Two superb mica gneiss menhirs stand on the Lambert Plateau. Respectively 3.15 and 2.82 metres high, they have been dated from the end of the Neolithic period (4,000 to 2,000 B.C.), at the end of the Bronze Age. Nothing is known about how they were built, but they are certainly worth the trip, if only for the beauty of the site where they are situated, one and a quarter hours by foot from Collobrières. Earthenware fragments and carved stone tools confirm the existence of a Neolithic civilisation on the coast and further inland. The Ligures settled in the Var around the year 900 B.C., a fact attested to by the oppida in Montjean, at Cavalaire, and in Maravielle, at La Môle. Who were the first inhabitants ? In 600 B.C., the Greeks founded Massalia (Marseille) and a series of colonies on the Var coast, including Six Fours (Tauroeis), Hyères (Olbia) and Cavalaire (Heraclea Caccabaria). The numerous shipwrecks found off the coast are proof of significant trade between Massalia and Italy through the trading posts in the Var. Between 154 and 125 B.C., the Romans occupied the entire region and established the "Provincia romana" (the origin of the word "Provence"). Two new colonies were founded along the Via Aurelia, which linked Italy to the Rhone: Forum Voconi, between Vidauban and Le Luc, and Forum Julii (Frejus). In 125 B.C., the Romans intervened to pacify the Provencal region, racked by strife between the Celto-Ligurians and the Greeks in Marseille. The Romans established the "Pax Romana", and Roman families who had been awarded lands there began to build country villas along the Mediterranean coast. One example of the many residences of this type is the Pardigon 2 villa, adjacent to the car park beside La Croix Valmer beach. The Aristide Fabre archaeological association, which has been carrying out excavations on the site for a number of years, has uncovered one metre of the foundations of this comfortable home and its outbuildings, covering a total of 3,500 square metres (ca. 37,000 square feet), and has been able to establish its original layout with precision.

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