The pile dwellings of Lake Neuchâtel and Lake Geneva
Under the water or in the marshes of Lake Neuchâtel and Lake Geneva lie the remains of villages built between the Neolithic and the end of the Bronze Age. Several of these sites have been on Unesco's World Heritage List since 2011.
What a pile dwelling is
The Historical Dictionary of Switzerland speaks of «shoreline settlements». They are also called pile dwellings, or palafittes in French, from the Italian pali (piles) and fittare (to drive in). They are villages built on the shores of lakes and marshes around the Alps: in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, France, Italy and Slovenia. Most Swiss sites are on the Plateau.
This type of settlement appears in the Middle Neolithic and disappears almost completely at the end of the Bronze Age, between 850 and 800 BC. The Dictionary distinguishes four main periods of occupation on the Plateau: the Middle Neolithic (4300-3400 BC), the Late Neolithic (3300-2450 BC), the Early Bronze Age (1810-1490 BC) and the Late Bronze Age (1080-850 BC). The Middle and Recent Bronze Age have yielded no shoreline village; the Dictionary links this gap to a climate-driven rise in lake levels between about 1500 and 1100 BC.
A discovery in the winter of 1853-1854
The first remains were spotted in the winter of 1853-1854 in Lake Zurich. A drought lowered the water level and uncovered oak piles and objects at Meilen. Ferdinand Keller, president of the Antiquarian Society of Zurich, saw in them a village built on a platform above the water. The Dictionary notes that his image drew on engravings of Indonesian lake villages published after the expedition of Jules Dumont d'Urville.
The same drought affected French-speaking Switzerland: at Saint-Aubin-Sauges, it partly exposed the Port-Conty site. Frédéric Troyon was the first to look for such remains in Lake Geneva and Lake Neuchâtel. At Morges, the villages of Les Roseaux, La Grande-Cité and Vers-l'Église were explored from 1854. In 1858 Ferdinand Keller reported sites at Hauterive and at Petit-Cortaillod. Edouard Desor popularised the term on Lake Neuchâtel, and François-Alphonse Forel devoted a three-volume study to Lake Geneva (1892, 1896 and 1904).
The myth of the «Lake Dwellers»
According to the Dictionary, Keller's interpretation gave rise to the myth of the «lake dwellings». The Dictionary links this myth to the search for a national identity after the creation of the federal state in 1848. The «Lake Dwellers» were then set against the «Land Dwellers», thought to be less advanced. This opposition was discussed and criticised by Emil Vogt in 1955, and it is rejected today.
We now know that these villages belong to the same Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures as the settlements on dry land. The houses often had a raised floor, as protection against seasonal floods. Many villages were surrounded by a breakwater palisade, and some were linked to the shore by a path.
The Jura water correction and the looters
On Lake Neuchâtel, the first Jura water correction lowered the level of the lake. At Cortaillod, the exposed sites were heavily looted between 1876 and 1879, and many objects went abroad. At Hauterive, the lowering of the lake in 1880 revealed the extent of the settlement. At Auvernier, the first excavations, between 1854 and 1919, are described as chaotic, and the lower lake enlarged the municipal territory by about 15 hectares.
The La Tène site, at Marin-Épagnier, discovered in 1857, was also exploited after the water correction. It is not a pile-dwelling village but a Celtic site of the Iron Age.
What the wood can date
In water and mud, wood, basketry and textiles survive. The Dictionary stresses that these materials allow very precise dating thanks to dendrochronology, which dates the felling of a tree from its growth rings.
The pages of this site give several examples. At Gorgier, the Les Argilliez village, of the Cortaillod culture, is dated between about 3841 and 3528 BC; the site was mapped in 2015, with 4'834 piles over 7'000 m². At Bevaix, the L'Abbaye 2 village, now 180 metres from the shore, was occupied between 1053 and 878 BC. At Hauterive, a Late Bronze Age village covers 8'700 m², and its 7'500 piles make it possible to reconstruct the plans of the houses. At Corsier-Port, on Lake Geneva, the study of 253 piles revealed eight felling phases.
Some sites on the two lakes
On Lake Neuchâtel, the shores of Auvernier have ten zones of former villages over 1.5 km. The sites of Concise have yielded thousands of objects dated from about 3850 to 1050 BC. Chevroux has a dozen sites along its shore. At Yvonand, drainage work at the place called Le Marais made it possible to identify the sites in 1920 and 1921; according to the Dictionary, this site marks the western limit of the Horgen culture in French-speaking Switzerland. At Grandson, the Corcelettes village is the main Bronze Age site of the municipality.
On Lake Geneva, the Versoix-Bourg site lies about 170 metres from the present shore. It covers more than three hectares according to the Dictionary's article on the site, nearly four according to the general article; a path of piles and pebbles linked it to the shore. The Bellerive I site, from the Late Bronze Age, is the best preserved on the Swiss shore of the Petit-Lac. Other sites are found at Tolochenaz (Le Boiron) and at Préverenges.
World Heritage since 2011
In 2011 Unesco added the serial property «Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps» to the World Heritage List. It brings together 111 sites, 56 of them in Switzerland, built between about 5000 and 500 BC according to Unesco. The Dictionary counts more than 394 other pile-dwelling settlements in Switzerland, associated with the listing without being on the list.
The listed sites on the two lakes include Auvernier-La Saunerie and Auvernier-Les Graviers, Bevaix-L'Abbaye 2, Gorgier-Les Argilliez, Saint-Aubin-Sauges Port-Conty, the Concise sites, Corcelettes at Grandson, Yvonand-Le Marais, Chevroux, Morges, Préverenges I, Corsier-Port, Versoix-Bourg and Bellerive I. The Dictionary lists among the threats motorboat traffic, the draining of marshes and the building over of shorelines.
Places mentioned
- Auvernier
- Cortaillod
- Hauterive
- Bevaix
- Gorgier
- Saint-Aubin-Sauges
- Marin-Épagnier
- Concise
- Grandson
- Yvonand
- Chevroux
- Morges
- Tolochenaz
- Préverenges
- Corsier-Port
- Versoix-Bourg
- Station de Bellerive I