THIVERNY
Oise, France.
In the Senlis arrondissement and the canton of Creil. Thiverny, on the Roman road from Senlis to Beauvais, was a center inhabited from the Neolithic Age on. In 1823, while stone was being quarried, a grotto was unearthed containing ca. 30 Neolithic tombs, and nearby an important stratum of carved flints apparently designed for scraping furs. A
considerable quantity of protohistoric pottery was also
found. Clearing the surface soil revealed a fairly large
protohistoric village. Triangular in shape, it was made
up of isolated houses protected from the valley wind by
a curved wall. The hearth took up part of the floor,
which was covered with unsquared stones; the walls were
of earth supported by logs. Objects found there date the
village from the Late Bronze Age or Iron Age I.
In the area known as Les Carrières, an underground
room 5.7 m square was found. The masonry construction is very curious: large rectangular stones with a dry joint, occasionally in trapezoidal form, to make a buttress near the entrance, embedded in the wall. Various
architectural fragments suggest to some a structure of
Greek origin. Next to this room was found a well and
a complex of bath buildings, rectangular rooms arranged
on either side of a semicircular pool. Probably the complex had a gallery in front of it. The walls of the largest
of these rooms were covered with a rich, varied, painted
decoration: a sea-green palm-leaf on a bright red or
black ground, big flowers, extremely slender reeds, and
framing them either a band with an imitation marble
design or a golden arrow on a black background. This
room was later used as a storehouse, and many small
objects have been found: depilating tweezers, spatulas, a bronze spoon.
Chance finds made in the last century include the discovery of quarries and in 1843 of a remarkable gold torque. Acquired by the Cabinet des Médailles, this is the so-called torque of Saint-Leu d'Esserent, dating from the Late Bronze Age.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
J. Dechelette,
Manuel d'archéologie
prehistorique, celtique et gallo-romaine 2, 1 (1910) 355;
A. Piganiol, “Informations archéologiques,”
Gallia 9
(1951) 82; 12 (1954) 145; 15 (1967) 168-70; P. Durvin,
“Les silex de Thiverny,”
Revue archéologique de lest et
du centre est 7 (1956) 64-72; id., “Le village protohistorique de Thiverny et son milieu archéologique,”
Ogam
13 (1961) 537-56; id., “La céramique protohistorique de
Thiverny,”
Celticum 9 (1963) 29-44; id., “Le monument
souterrain de Thiverny,”
Ogam 17 (1965) 279-94; id.,
“Les découvertes de La Téne au pays des Bellovaques,”
Celticum 15 (1965) 134-35; id.,
La région de Creil a l'époque gallo-romaine (1967) 59-71.
P. LEMAN
