Keep to transmit

The Solutré Prehistory Museum preserves evidence of 350 years of human occupation in Southern Burgundy. The collections mainly come from the prehistoric sites of Solutré, Vergisson and Mâconnais. Since its discovery in 000, the site bears witness to the continuous evolution of research techniques in archaeology, conceptions of Prehistory and its representation from the end of the 1866th century to the present day. Immerse yourself in the heart of the riches of one of the largest open-air deposits in Europe, the eponymous Solutrean site.

Created in 1987 by the Department of Saône-et-Loire , with the support and participation of the French State, the Solutré Prehistory Museum is more than just a site museum. It brings together the archaeological collections from the Solutré prehistoric site , frequented by human groups since the middle of the last Ice Age, from the Mâconnais region and southern Burgundy, from the Loire Valley to the Saône Valley. Furthermore, the Solutré site is a historical landmark, bearing witness to the first prehistoric archaeology in France, the history of prehistory, and the evolution of research techniques.

True cultural artifacts, the Rock, the site, and its archaeology have often inspired 19th and 20th-century artists. The site has contributed to shaping the popular image of Prehistory , from early works of popular science to school posters of the 1970s, including the very first prehistoric novel written by its first excavator (Adrien Arcelin, who published the novel Solutré ou les chasseurs de rennes de la France centrale under the anagrammatic pseudonym "A. Cranile" in 1872). The silhouette of its Rock, its prehistoric inhabitants, and its legendary hunt into the abyss constituted, for the general public, the first images of times before recorded history…

Where do the collections come from?

In 1986 , the Solutré Departmental Museum of Prehistory, still in its early stages, lacked a collection, a fundamental component. Three foundational deposits were then made at its creation:

by the Academy of Mâcon, of which Adrien Arcelin (1838-1904), inventor and first excavator of the site, was for many years President and perpetual secretary,
by Musée des Ursulines of the City of Mâcon, of which Adrien Arcelin was also curator and to whom he gave his personal collection of objects from the excavations of Solutré and other sites in the Mâconnais,
by the State, with which the prehistorian Jean Combier (1926-2020), director of the Solutré excavations in the 1970s, was both research director of the CNRS and director of prehistoric antiquities in the Rhône-Alpes region.

Donations and acquisitions

Since 1987, these three founding repositories have been enriched by donations and acquisitions made by the various curators from the 1990s and 2000s to the present day.

These donations and acquisitions respond to the following thematic axes:

archaeology prehistory of the site and the Mâconnais,
witnesses to the scientific history of the site,
publications relating to the history of the site and its role in the history of Prehistory, as new scientific discipline,
representations of the site and Prehistory through time (hunting into the abyss, reconstitution of the landscape, sometimes naive), its notoriety being inseparable from its status as a prehistoric station and eponymous site,
dissemination of knowledge about Prehistory through popular representations and the development of printing,
Prehistory and contemporary art.

Today, the collections of the Museum of Prehistory boast over 300 objects of all kinds! Archaeological series from preventive excavations carried out in the Archaeological Park , tools and remains of prehistoric animals, human remains found at settlement sites, paintings and watercolors depicting the site in Prehistory or today, graphic artworks and popular representations of Prehistory accompanying the dissemination of knowledge (comic strips, advertising and educational chromolithographs), bronze sculptures from the late 000th century, contemporary paintings, books, magazines and old publications on the Solutré site or on Prehistory, postcards documenting the excavations in the 1920s, a life-size reconstruction of large extinct carnivores, a dermoplasty of a Neanderthal man, metal objects and medieval human remains, an ancient stele from Solutré… so many objects to delight the eyes of the curious!

Additional deposits

The creation of the museum, which is also on the eponymous site, led the State to deposit there material from various archaeological excavations in the region:

the excavations carried out by Jean Combier in Solutré between 1968-1976 on land purchased by the State from Crot du Charnier, supplemented by the elements gathered during his excavations with Bernard Gély and Jean-Louis Porte, in 1987 and 1988, and excavations of theUniversity of Kansas, directed by Anta Montet-White and Jack Hofman in 1997-1998. These series constitute the largest deposit with more than 650 containers. They include most of the fauna and lithic furniture collected in the second half of the XNUMXth century on the site.
Other deposits complement the collections:

the excavations of the occupations of Varennes-Lès-Mâcon, from the Lower Paleolithic (before 300,000 years ago) to the Epipaleolithic (around -12,000 years before present)

The deposit at the Solutré-Village site and the "Hangar Sève," evidence of the ancient occupations of the Solutré deposit, dating back more than 50,000 years,

the Vergisson occupations dating from the end of the Middle Paleolithic (between 300,000 and 45,000 years ago) , including faunal and lithic remains and the Neanderthal human remains from the deposit of paleoanthropologist Silvana Condemi.