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Gaul warriors unearthed at 2,300-year-old site

French archaeologists have unearthed the graves of several Gaul warriors dating back around 2300 years, at the site of a huge business park development near the city of Troyes in central France.

Published: 12 April 2013 16:30 CEST
Gaul warriors unearthed at 2,300-year-old site
One of the Gaul warriors unearthed at the site near Troyes. Photo: Francois Nascimbeni/AFP

Archeologists from the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) have been carrying out excavations at the site near Buchères over the course of recent years.

But even they were surprised by their latest discovery at the 260-hectare site, which is set to become the Aube Logistical Park.

Around 30 graves dating back to between 260 and 325 BC were identified at the site, with around half being excavated, revealing the remains of Gaul warriors, with weapons and shields in hand. Women are buried alongside them.

Scientists are surprised by the presence of a burial ground in that particular spot, as there had been no settlements recorded in the area.

Archeologists believe it may have been chosen because it was already a cemetery dating back to the Bronze Age.

The artefacts found are to be taken away and preserved.

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TODAY IN FRANCE

France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

France has paved the way towards paying reparations to more relatives of Algerians who sided with France in their country's independence war but were then interned in French camps.

Published: 16 May 2023 08:29 CEST
France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

More than 200,000 Algerians fought with the French army in the war that pitted Algerian independence fighters against their French colonial masters from 1954 to 1962.

At the end of the war, the French government left the loyalist fighters known as Harkis to fend for themselves, despite earlier promises it would look after them.

Trapped in Algeria, many were massacred as the new authorities took revenge.

Thousands of others who fled to France were held in camps, often with their families, in deplorable conditions that an AFP investigation recently found led to the deaths of dozens of children, most of them babies.

READ ALSO Who are the Harkis and why are they still a sore subject in France?

French President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 asked for “forgiveness” on behalf of his country for abandoning the Harkis and their families after independence.

The following year, a law was passed to recognise the state’s responsibility for the “indignity of the hosting and living conditions on its territory”, which caused “exclusion, suffering and lasting trauma”, and recognised the right to reparations for those who had lived in 89 of the internment camps.

But following a new report, 45 new sites – including military camps, slums and shacks – were added on Monday to that list of places the Harkis and their relatives were forced to live, the government said.

Now “up to 14,000 (more) people could receive compensation after transiting through one of these structures,” it said, signalling possible reparations for both the Harkis and their descendants.

Secretary of state Patricia Miralles said the decision hoped to “make amends for a new injustice, including in regions where until now the prejudices suffered by the Harkis living there were not recognised”.

Macron has spoken out on a number of France’s unresolved colonial legacies, including nuclear testing in Polynesia, its role in the Rwandan genocide and war crimes in Algeria.

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