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———. 1948. Philippine and East Asian Archaeology, and Its Relation to the Origin of the Pacific Islands Population. National Research Council of the Philippines, Bulletin 29, Quezon City. Manila.

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Solheim, W.G. 1971. “Henry Otley Beyer.” In Asian Perspectives 12. Ed. W.G. Solheim II. University of Hawaii Press.

Biblical Archaeology

See Albright, William Foxwell; Mesopotamia; Syro-Palestinian and Biblical Archaeology

Bibracte

Bibracte is located at Mont Beuvray in the commune of Saint-Leger-sous-Beuvray in the French department of Saône-et-Loire. The oppidium (fortified town) of Bibracte, the city of Greater Gaul that witnessed the return of Julius Caesar on many occasions, was the capital of the tribe known as Heduens, who lived west of what is now the region of Burgundy. The Heduens were allies of the Romans and defected to Caesar at the beginning of the revolt of 52 b.c. It was in Bibracte that Vercingetorix pleaded his case for a union of tribes against Caesar, it was in Bibracte that Caesar compiled most of his book on Greater Gaul during the winter of 52–51 b.c., and it was close to this city that the Helvetians had fought their battles in 58 b.c. at the beginning of the rebellion.

By the fifteenth century a.d., it was traditional to locate Bibracte on Mont Beuvray, but scholars of the eighteenth century, anxious to claim greatest antiquity for the town of Autun, refuted that location. However in 1851, a young wine merchant, Jean-Gabriel Bulliot, began to reexamine all of the evidence through with a survey of the area and its archaeological evidence. It took him fifteen years, and the moral and financial encouragement of Emperor Napoleon III, to justify his thesis to his scholarly adversaries—Bibracte was on Mont Beuvray. The archaeological research was pieced together between 1867 and 1895, the year his nephew archaeologist joseph déchelette, the celebrated author of the Manuel d’archéologie, took over the project and continued his uncle’s work until 1907. The research on Bibracte played a large role in the development of archaeological methods in France and in what became known as Iron Age studies: “the Beuvraisian” was for a long time the name given to the last phase of the late la tène period, 140–30 b.c.

Mont Beuvray, which stands out from the southern Morvan Mountains, is more than 800 meters in altitude and comprises three hills whose rounded slopes are joined by gentle plateau. Covered by fir tree forests, it was still partly cultivated and partly planted with beech and chestnut trees as late as the 1950s. The substrata, disturbed by numerous tectonic movements, is essentially composed of rhyolites. Bulliot located a rampart five kilometers long that ran in part along the upper reaches of the slopes and delimited a surface area of approximately 135 hectares. Recent research has identified a second line of defense, even older, that encircled an area of 200 hectares.

Bulliot noted the first rampart in 1867, but it was not until 1868, after the publication of research concerning the fort of Murcens, located in Cras in the department of Lot, by E. Castagne that Bulliot began to establish links between his structure of beams and rocks and “the Gaulish wall” written about by Caesar during the siege of Bourges (Avaricum) in 52 b.c. (Bello gallico 7.23). The extent of this wall, with its beams fixed into each other by long iron pieces, and the development of monumental gateways marked the impetus to establish, for the first time in the Celtic world, an urban area or town, not just a hill fort, that was distinct from the surrounding country.

Bulliot insisted that the original occupations of this built-up area would have included parts of the town that were devoted to artisans working in iron, bronze, and enameling. There would have been a residential quarter grouping the houses of the rich together, which would have been constructed from local materials but would have used Roman plans and building techniques. Part of the plateau would have been