Les « princes de la Manche » : des États royaux dans l’Europe de l’âge du Bronze ?

Abstract

Early Bronze Age societies on both sides of the Channel are well known for the many monumental burial mounds scattered across northwestern France and southern England. From a neo-evolutionist perspective, they are classically considered chiefdoms because of the presence of “princely” graves. Social and territorial data suggest the existence of a series of spatially circumscribed political entities (160 to 2,000 km²). These entities appear to have based their wealth on controlling the production of food resources, salt and ores, and trade. These facts and the interpretations that we can legitimately draw from them (pronounced hierarchy, class divisions, fundiary property, monopoly of symbolic violence, territorial sovereignty, control over religion) suggest that these Early Bronze Age societies could well correspond to royal societies and, consequently, to an early form of “State”.

Keywords

• social organisation
• state formation
• Early Bronze Age
• Armorica
• Wessex