Archaeological continuum around the sanctuary of Mars Mullo
Résumé
Through the intensive and extensive application of a wide variety of exploratory methods and analytical techniques, we can measure the impact of the sanctuary of Mars Mullo Allonnes, (Sarthe, France) on the detected evidence within its landscape.
A complete analysis of all the aerial coverage, associated with the vectorisation of the different land registries (“Cadastre napoléonien”, “plans terriers”) gives us a good vision of the evolution of the landscape.
Since the digging of a big roman thermal establishment in 1840, a long tradition of archaeological surveys around Allonnes has been going on. During the last twenty years, scientific excavations and different rescue operations has allowed the characterisation of the human occupation from the Bronze Age to the medieval period.
Magnetic prospections over several areas of the district complement our actual knowledge of the landscape.
Different orientations of land have been observed: at the Celtic period, they follow the physical and relief constraints. Then, a quite regular spatial organisation is integrated into the Roman roads distributions, but seems to follow an older implantation. The medieval occupation impacts the landscape to a very low level, in function of the type of agricultural exploitations. The antic sanctuary possessions are transmitted to the new Christian religious administration for a long time, until the French Revolution. So, in this area, landscape fossilizes the oldest organisations until the 1960's.