Village Troglodytique de la Madeleine - Vallée de la Vézère

WELCOME TO THE MADELEINE!

You've left your car at the car park so now let us take you back into the past.

Why did men settle on the banks of the Vezere for over 400, 000 years?
First of all for the quality of life. But also because nature always provided food and shelter.

Under the effect of erosion, the limestone cliffs hollowed out. These shelters were used by all the men who followed one another through the Aquitaine. Prehistoric man found there an easy natural dwelling place and in medieval times, fortresses and villages were built there.

At the bottom of the well-positioned cliff (South, Southwest) groups of hunters settled under a rock shelter. The community grew and was continnously inhabited until the end of the ice era, 10,000 years ago.

The archaeologists who discovered the site in 1863 (Lartet and Christy) and those who searched it until 1976 found enough artefacts (flints or tools made of bones or of antlers) for La Madeleine to be associated with the great civilisation of semi-nomadic hunters gatherers of the Upper Palaeolithic in Western Europe.

The Magdalenians:

Comfortably settled in the rock shelter, they exploited the reindeer droves passing in the valley. Thanks to the harpoons they invented and to the hooks they already had, they fished salmon and trout in the river. They picked roots, berries and herbs in the deep valleys. Sometimes they went deep into the caves to paint animals and symbols like at Rouffignac for instance.

The death of a child. One of them, not even three and a half years old was buried with his corpse covered with ochre. More than 1300 shells were used to make jewels such as bangles, necklaces and a hair-net, which were covering the corpse.

They could have been living like that for a long time but a disaster occurred: a global warming.

This was in favour of the brand new Neolithic farmers. After a long training in Southern Europe, they colonised Western Europe. The Vezere Valley had to forget the mammoths to discover the vegetable garden.

Thanks to bronze, copper and iron, men became soldiers, strategists and emperors.

The Celts and the Gauls, brave but divided, could not resist the Roman troops. The Aquitaine became an imperial province until 450 AD.

Toponymy gives pieces of information about the Gallo-Roman life.

Archaeologists found bronze jewels and traces of pipes at Petit-marzac, not far from here. It was a villea (a farm). But things changed and the Empire collapsed under the pressure of the Barbarians, the Wisigoths and the Alans. Between 500 and 900 AD, the Frankish kingdom, created by Clovis was far from the deep forests of the Aquitaine. A few towns still existed. Some monasteries tried to slow down the fall of the civilisation. But most people lived in small isolated communities.

Writing and technical know-how died out, above all in agriculture, pottery and architecture. Moreover, the Saracens, the Vikings and the Normans also appreciated the gentle way of life of this beautiful region.

Then began the Middle Ages:

The Emperor is Charlemagne, it was the Carolinian rebirth, the beginning of the roman Art and of the feudal system. The West found itself again. The Christendom/ Christianity spread out and the people gathered under the authority of the mighty.

Aroundthe year 1000 the cliffs of this valley were once again used and men often built villages and fortified places overhanging them, like her. This fortified place was most likely built in the begining of the XII century to check the loop of the Vezere which surrounds us on three sides. It is an ideal strategic place. Its present state is the result of both lootings and the use of free stones employed to erect other buildings…

La Madeleine was a civilian village but its inhabitants were worried, the forest wasnít very far but it wasnít very safe either. Gangs of looters or highwaymen were likely kill and rob people.

In 1150, Alienor díAquitaine left Louis VII for Henri II Plantagenet, future King of England and the peasants lived on the border between two aggressive kingdoms. Despite the protection of the castle, they built a defence system at the entrance of the village.

I You are now at the entrance. On the cliff you can see the defence makings. Square holes, beam holes show that there was a fortified house over a drop. **The embankment on which you are walking did not exist at the time. Handling a narrow retractable footbridge guards could throw intruders into the river.

II All along the overhanging rock, men cut a dripstone (gutter) to prevent rain water from falling into the houses.

III They started to cut flues at the end of the 13th Century. Before that, the fireplace was on the ground.

IV Like in the farms in the valley, there were two storey houses. Animals occupied the ground floor. You can see what may have been a trough A, partitions B, inhabitants lived on the first floor. They dug recesses to store food or goods. You can see traces of partitions D.

V Most of the walls wear built in the 14th Century. There was also a door frame with hinges A, the moulding B, and the striking plate hole C.

This system, which we still use, only appeared later in civilian buildings. A piece of wood in a slit on the soil was enough.

VI Several animal species lived in this kind of village: small pigs, sheep, goats, hens, ducks, geese and peacocks. Here was probably a kind of enclosure because regularly spaced holes indicate there was a fence. On both sides of the street gutters drained off rain and waste into the river.

VII Two semi-detached houses with fronts. The holes you can see on the roof and on the ground, the rings cut in the rock suggest craft work. Here also, men slept on the first floor. Their beds were in the high deep recesses. On the right side of the chimney is a stone salting tub and in front of it a contemporary baking oven.

Mind your head in the narrow hall then turn to the left towards the chapel.

VIII In the end of the first chapel, the wall and roof of which are in the rock, the floor is paved. There is a roman altar to the East.

IX The second chapel was built in the 15th Century. It is partly troglodytic and partly roof covered. Again to the East is a Roman (Style) altar

On the floor are limestone fragments stuck together to make a cobbled surface. The walls were coated and decorated with Christian scenes. Under the protecting plexiglas you can see a faded fresco, maybe it is a sundial?...

The vault is a gothic arch and a very nice basket-handle arch divides the two chapels.

X Going down from the chapel, you cross the street and at the end of the wall a door opens into a shed? A henhouse? Probably a room for animals; a stone ring is embedded in the wall to tie up goats or sheep.

XI You are now back in the street and then in the village square with an intermittent spring on the right. It only flows during very dry periods. Nowadays we know it is a capillarity phenomenon but at the time it surely was considered a kind of miracle and perhaps it explains why the site was inhabited for such a long period.

XII Here you are at the end of the village and the archaeological site is about 50 meters ahead at the bottom of the cliffs.

XIII You are in front of the plan of the Vezere Valley on which you can see the main troglodytic dwellings. Up and to the left, there is a square hole. AíCluzeauí (underground shelter ). Not very deep just large enough for one person and each village has got one of its own. These look-out points were perhaps used for a communication system between villages.

Now itís time to take me back to the reception where the staff will be pleased to answer any questions. Thank you.