Throughout human history there have been places that our ancestors recognised as sacred. From those remote beginnings, they have preserved enduring evidence of that hierophany. Places of worship since antiquity, they safeguard monumental traces of our past. They tell the story of a lost age and of a distant passage through time, when rituals were performed through stone and bare earth. Near the church of Saint-Martin-de-Corléans in Aosta lies a remarkable megalithic area, one of the most extraordinary examples of uninterrupted ritual continuity in Western Europe. Preserved in exceptional condition, the site retained its sacred and funerary functions for more than six thousand years, despite the succession of different peoples and belief systems. Over the millennia, this unbroken sacred tradition found expression in many different forms: from fertility rites and ritual wells to menhirs, statue-menhirs and dolmens, culminating in the Christian church of Saint Martin, built during the twelfth century.
The archaeological site and museum
The archaeological site of Saint-Martin-de-Corléans was brought to light in 19691. During construction work, archaeological remains of exceptional importance emerged as though rising from the depths of history itself. The discovery came about by pure chance. While workers were removing large stones from the site, two archaeologists from Aosta, Franco Mezzena and Rosanna Mollo, happened to pass by. Watching the excavation, they quickly realised that these were no ordinary boulders. They were slabs carved by human hands thousands of years earlier. The Autonomous Region of Aosta Valley acted swiftly and decisively, ordering the immediate protection of the site. The first archaeological investigations began soon after the discovery and concluded in 1990, although excavations continue to this day.
Archaeologists have identified an exceptionally complex stratigraphy at the megalithic area of Saint-Martin-de-Corléans. Reaching a depth of around six metres and covering almost 10,000 square metres, it preserves evidence of more than six millennia of uninterrupted human activity2. To protect this extraordinary heritage while making it accessible to the public, a vast protective structure was built over the site. Opened in 2016, the museum and its visitor route allow visitors to walk step by step through one of Europe’s oldest sacred landscapes3. The enclosed structure has been designed to reproduce the natural cycle of daylight and darkness.
The Sacred Ploughing of the megalithic area of Saint-Martin-de-Corléans
The earliest phase of ritual activity at Saint-Martin-de-Corléans dates back to the Neolithic period. By the end of the fifth millennium BC, the ground at this megalithic site had already been consecrated. Archaeologists discovered a series of parallel ridges and furrows cut into an extensive layer of silty soil. They were created through the practice of sacred ploughing. From that moment onwards, the land was never cultivated again. As sediments gradually accumulated, the furrows remained sealed and undisturbed until their rediscovery in modern times.
The ploughing ritual likely served a propitiatory purpose connected with the fertility of the land and the renewal of nature. Some archaeological evidence suggests that the soil was cut using a wooden plough drawn by oxen. If confirmed, this would represent a discovery of exceptional significance. The earliest previously known evidence for animal-drawn ploughing dates only to the Chalcolithic period, several centuries later.
The votive wells
A later phase saw the creation of fifteen circular pits that people used for ritual purposes. The officiants filled these early wells with quern stones and seeds before setting them alight in ceremonial fires. This discovery demonstrates both the continuity of fertility rites and their gradual development, perhaps reflecting advances in agricultural practice. The burnt remains enabled archaeologists to identify the seeds used – mainly cereals and legumes – and, above all, to establish the date of the pits. Radiocarbon analysis of the organic material places them between 4300 and 3950 BC. Their north-east to south-west alignment also suggests the existence of a settlement in that direction, although its location remains unknown.
The wooden totems of Saint-Martin-de-Corléans
From the end of the fourth millennium BC, Saint-Martin-de-Corléans became characterised by rows of upright monuments. Of the earliest examples, twenty-four wooden posts arranged according to the same orientation as the ritual wells, only the postholes survive. Here too, traces of ritual practices have come to light. Archaeologists found the remains of charred seeds within the postholes, while analysis of the organic residues showed that the posts had been fashioned from larch and pine trunks.
The wooden posts, perhaps carved into anthropomorphic forms, probably served a totemic function. They may have been associated with an ancestral cult practised by the communities that occupied the site. These wooden effigies marked a sacred place that the forebears had chosen as the source of life. It is no coincidence that similar monuments often appear at the foot of mountain slopes, beside clearings, or at points where ancient routes required clear markers. They may also have embodied protective ancestral spirits or supernatural beings to whom people addressed propitiatory rites.
Menhirs and statue-menhirs
The tradition of erecting upright monuments continued throughout the fourth millennium BC. However, its symbolic language gradually shifted from wood to stone. Menhirs and roughly dressed polygonal slabs, some pierced by a large circular hole, were set into the ground in place of the earlier timber monuments.
Over time, these stone monuments assumed increasingly anthropomorphic forms. Excavations at the megalithic area of Saint-Martin-de-Corléans have uncovered more than forty statue-menhirs, one of the most important assemblages of megalithic sculpture in Italy4. Carved from schist or, more rarely, Bardiglio marble, these monoliths have a distinctive trapezoidal outline. Their front surfaces bear incised representations of the human figure. The anthropomorphic monoliths of Lunigiana, preserved in the Museo delle Statue Stele Lunigianesi in Pontremoli, provide a close parallel in both form and function. Unlike most Lunigiana examples, however, archaeologists discovered the Aosta statue-menhirs in their original ritual setting, making them an exceptionally rare archaeological find.
The Archaic and Developed types
The statue-menhirs of Saint-Martin-de-Corléans fall into two principal stylistic groups5. The earlier type, known as the Archaic type, bears shallow incisions that mark only the essential features of the human figure. A small head rests on broad shoulders, while the body narrows towards the base. Artists sometimes indicated elements of clothing.
The second group, known as the Developed type, displays much greater attention to detail, particularly in the rendering of the human body. These monuments have a broader silhouette and a distinctive head shaped like a gendarme’s hat. Artists carefully dressed the stone surface to create a low relief, from which a clearly defined face with nose and eyebrows emerges, along with arms bent at right angles across the torso, clothing and personal ornaments. Weapons such as daggers, bows and axes were frequently engraved in stylised geometric form. In this later style, viewers identify the figure’s sex not by anatomical features, as often happens at Pontremoli, but by costume and adornment.
The pantheon of Saint-Martin-de-Corléans
The statue-menhirs of Saint-Martin-de-Corléans represent the culmination of an artistic evolution that spanned several centuries. It began with the erection of wooden posts and continued through the setting up of menhirs before reaching its fullest expression in anthropomorphic stone monuments. Like their predecessors, the statue-menhirs were arranged in rows and were often grouped facing the same direction. This was the most monumental phase of the cult of deified ancestors, whose images together formed a kind of megalithic pantheon. It is also possible that the monoliths follow the alignment of particular constellations, although this hypothesis remains unproven.
The funerary use of the Saint-Martin-de-Corléans site
Towards the end of the Chalcolithic period, Saint-Martin-de-Corléans gradually ceased to function as a place of worship and took on a funerary role. This phase saw the construction of a monumental dolmen tomb known as Tomb II. Builders raised the burial chamber on a triangular platform, where the community carried out successive collective inhumations. The tomb probably served members of a dominant community, who continued to use it for more than five centuries. Tomb II yielded a rich assemblage of grave goods, including pottery vessels, bronze dress pins and a bronze razor.
Excavations within Tomb II uncovered numerous human skeletal remains, including several skulls of particular significance. They appear to preserve evidence of some of the earliest known surgical procedures. In two cases, examination of the cranial bones revealed extensive circular lesions produced ante mortem by trepanation. The clear signs of bone remodelling around the openings demonstrate that both individuals survived the operation.
The continuity of the sacred
Saint-Martin-de-Corléans continued to serve as a burial ground throughout the Protohistoric period. Archaeologists have uncovered inhumation burials dating to the late fourth century BC, together with grave goods associated with cremation burials of the first century BC. Following the foundation of the Roman colony of Augusta Praetoria in 25 BC, the site became part of an extensive extramural cemetery containing around thirty graves. Cremation was the prevailing funerary rite. In some cases, the body was burned directly within the burial pit (bustum), while in others the ashes were placed in cinerary urns.
The barbarian invasions of the following centuries brought about the decline of the site’s ancient ritual traditions. Yet its sacred character endured. During the Middle Ages, Christian worship and architecture became the latest expression of a place that had retained its religious significance for thousands of years. The church of Saint-Martin-de-Corléans stands as the final stage in this remarkable process of cultural continuity.
The Romanesque church, first mentioned in a document of 1176 under the name Ecclesiam Sancti Martini de Coriano6, was probably built on the foundations of an earlier Roman villa. Sadly, little survives of the medieval church beyond its bell tower. The remainder of the building was almost entirely lost and was reconstructed only during the seventeenth century.
Samuele Corrente Naso
Notes
- R. Domaine, G. De Gattis, G. Zidda, L. Raiteri, M.Venegoni, Saint-Martin-de-Corléans, va in scena la preistoria, in Archeologia Viva, n. 180, 2016. ↩︎
- F. Mezzena, La Valle d’Aosta nel Neolitico e nell’Eneolitico, in Atti della XXXI Riunione Scientifica Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria (Courmayeur 2-5 giugno 1994), Firenze, 1997. ↩︎
- G. De Gattis, F. Martinet, G. Zidda, (a cura di), Area megalitica Saint-Martin-de-Corléans. La valorizzazione museografica, Documenti 14, Aosta, 2020. ↩︎
- F. Mezzena, Le stele antropomorfe nell’area megalitica di Aosta, in Dei di pietra. La grande statuaria antropomorfa nell’Europa del III millennio a.C., catalogo della mostra, Ginevra-Milano, 1998. ↩︎
- G. Zidda, Aspetti iconografici delle stele antropomorfe di Aosta, in La Valle d’Aosta nel quadro della preistoria e della protostoria dell’arco alpino centro-occidentale, Atti della XXXI Riunione Scientifica Istituto Italiano di Preistoria e Protostoria (Courmayeur 2-5 giugno 1994), Firenze, 1997. ↩︎
- A. P. Frutaz, Le fonti per la storia della Valle d’Aosta, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Roma, 1966. ↩︎
