the site exactly as he had described them, and a rigorous study of movable artifacts confirmed their origins and dates. One of the Gaulish walls of the oppidum was built before the siege, and the archaeological proof of that fact is incontrovertible.

The hill of Alesia is attached to the chalky Auxis range by only a narrow pass. It resembles a plateau, with a ninety-hectare surface surrounded by steep cliffs, and the impression from the Laumes Plain is much less grand than Caesar’s description of it as being as high and great as Sienna’s. Rather it is similar to the Puy d’Issolud (Vayrac, Lot), and resembles Uxellodunum, which Caesar put under siege in 51 b.c. The rampart was very little enlarged, because the cliffs discouraged direct attack. However, it is on the plain, as Caesar himself noted elsewhere, that the traces of battle can be best found.

The identification of the site of this battle gave archaeologists a fixed location point for an absolutely certain and essential chronology for the history of weapons, armaments, and coinage. Some of the coins did not have dates, only rare inscriptions of the name of chiefdoms, and only their weights and the alloy compositions enabled them to be classified. The presence of money in Alesia attests to its circulation in 52 b.c., and at this point it is enough to find a monetary series. As Vercingetorix called on the troops from all across Gaul to come to his rescue, Alesia must be considered a reference site for regions that were far away but participated in the uprising.

Caesar’s genius was exemplified not only in the conduct of the war’s operations, which caused the surrender of the Gaulish coalition, but also in his political exploitation of the situation. In 52 b.c., not only were the so-called conquered cities in revolt but also the great tribes of Bituriges, Arvernes, and all of their allies led by the Heduens. After many months of indecisive fighting, Vercingetorix called for another army to come and help him, but it never reached him; it was unable to penetrate Caesar’s defense.

Caesar went into battle at the most decisive moment of the war, and the siege of Uxellodunum the following year was the consequence of this. Contemporaries echo their general’s description of this secondary oppidum as a key site for a “Gaulish nation,” which was of their invention and for their glory. The kings, the emperors, and later the school of the Third Republic changed the rebellion of the Gaulic tribes into the first manifestation of the resistance of a French nation to an enemy. The hexagon shape of france can be justified in two ways: the space was defined by natural frontiers—the Rhine River, the Alps, and the Pyrenees Mountains; in time, it was the coalition of Gaulish peoples around Vercingetorix, who founded a modern French nation at Alesia.

It took more than 100 years of archaeological research to prove that the written record of history was, in part, Caesarian propaganda.

Oliver Buchsenschutz

References

Le Gall, J. 1963. Alesia: Archéologie et Histoire. Paris: Fayard.

Reddé, M., and S. Von Schurnbein. 1993. “Fouilles et recherches nouvelles sur les travaux du siège d’Alésia. Paris.” Comptes Rendus Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres.

Reddé, M., et al. 1995. “Fouilles et recherches nouvelles sur les travaux de Cesar devant Alésia, 1991–1994.” Aus Bericht der Römisch-Germanischen Komission 76, 73–158.

Schnapp, A., and O. Buchsenschutz. 1993. “Alésia.” In Les Lieux de mémoire, 272–315. Ed. P. Nora. Paris: Gallimard.

Altamira

Altimira is the name of a cave in Santander Province, northern spain, where Don Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, a local landowner, discovered Paleolithic paintings and engravings in 1879. The ceiling of the cave is particularly famous as it is decorated with an array of polychrome bison figures. Unfortunately, Sautuola’s claims for the art’s antiquity were rejected by the archaeological establishment for twenty years as a result of several factors—among them, he was an unknown amateur, no Paleolithic art had previusly been found outside France, and the animal figures looked too fresh and sophisticated to be genuinely ancient.