History of Provence encompasses the entire history of Provence, stretching from the protohistoric times up to the contemporary period. As a historical region, Provence is located within borders of the modern administrative region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in the southeast corner of France, between the Alps, the Mediterranean Sea, the river Rhône and the upper reaches of the river Durance. The region was inhabited since the prehistoric times. From about 900 BCE, it was settled by the Celts, and also by Greek colonists, from about 600 BCE.Musée de'Histoire de Marseille, l'Antiquité (Catalog of museum), pg. 21, Imprimerie Muncipale, Marseille, 1988 At the end of the 2nd century BCE, it was conquered by the Romans, who ruled the region until the 5th century CE. In the first half of the 6th century, it came under the Frankish rule, and was organized in time as the County of Provence. After the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, it became part of the Kingdom of Lower Burgundy (since 879), the Welfish Kingdom of Burgundy (since 933), and the Kingdom of Burgundy (Arles) within the Holy Roman Empire from 1032 up to the 1486, when the County was united with the Kingdom of France. During those periods, it was ruled by the Counts of Provence from various feudal families. Provence has been a part of France for over 500 years, but the region kept a specific cultural identity that persists to this day, particularly in the interior.Eduouard Baratier (editor), Histoire de la Provence, Editions Privat, Toulouse, 1990, Introduction.
Etymology
The region got its name in Roman times, when it was known as Provincia Romana, simply "the Roman province". This eventually was shortened to Provincia (the province),A History of Provence and as the language evolved from Latin to Provençal, so did the pronunciation and spelling.
Prehistoric Provence
The coast of Provence has some of the earliest sites of human habitation known in Europe. Primitive stone tools have been found in the Grotte du Vallonnet near Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, between Monaco and Menton, dating to between 1 million and 1.050 million years BC.Henry de Lumley, La Grande Histoire des premiers hommes europeens, pg. 122 The excavations at Terra Amata in Nice found signs of an encampment on a prehistoric beach, with traces of some of the earliest fireplaces found in Europe, dating to about 400,000 BC.See Henry de Lumley, La Grande Histoire des premiers hommes européens; also see Musée d'historie de Marseille, L'Antiquité, (Catalog of the Museum of History of Marseille), pg. 13. Tools dating to the Middle Paleolithic (300,000 BC) and Upper Paleolithic (30,000-10,000 BC) were discovered in the Observatory Cave, in the Jardin Exotique de Monaco.See site of the Museum of Archaeology and the Exotic Garden of Monaco. Tools found in the Grotte du Lazaret near Nice date to between 130,000 and 170,000 BC.(Max Escalon de Fonton, L'Homme avant l'histoire (Man Before History), pg. 15.)
During the Paleolithic age the inhabitants of Provence lived in caves, or in huts made of branches or covered with animal skins. Evidence found at the Grotte du Vallonnet shows they were more scavengers than hunters, using tools to scrape meat from the carcasses of bison, deer, rhinoceros, horses and other game killed by saber-toothed tigers, tigers, panthers and other predators.Lumley, La Grande Histoire des premiers europeens, pg. 125. They endured two ice ages, which caused dramatic changes in climate, vegetation and even sea level. At the beginning of the Paleolithic period, the sea level in western Provence was 150 meters higher than it is today. By the end of the Paleolithic, it had dropped 100 to 150 meters lower than today's sea level. The cave dwellings of the early inhabitants of Provence were inundated by the rising sea or left far from the sea and swept away by erosion.(see Escalon de Fonton, L'Homme avant l'histoire, pg. 16-17)
In 1985, a diver named Henri Cosquer discovered the mouth of a submarine cave 37 meters below the surface of the Calanque de Morgiou near Marseille. Inside, the walls of the Cosquer Cave are decorated with drawings of bisons, seals, penguins, horses and outlines of human hands, dating to between 27,000 and 19,000 BC.Aldo Bastié, Histoire de la Provence, Editions Ouest-France, 2001
Beginning in about 8,500 BC, at the end of the Neolithic period, the climate of Provence began to warm again.Musée d'histoire de Marseille, L'Antiquite (Catalog of the Museum of History of Marseille, pg. 13 The sea rose gradually to its present level, and the forests began to retreat. The disappearance of the forests and of deer and other large game meant that the inhabitants of Provence had to survive on rabbits, snails and wild sheep.
In about 6000 BC, the people, living around Châteauneuf-les-Martigues, were among the first people in Europe to domesticate wild sheep, which allowed them to stay in one place and to develop new industries. Inspired by imported pottery from the eastern Mediterranean, in about 6000 BC they created the first pottery made in France.Escalon de Fonton, L'Homme avant l'histoire, pg). 16-17
At about the same time, another wave of new settlers from the east, the Chasséens, arrived in Provence. They were farmers and warriors, and gradually displaced the pastoral people from their lands. They were followed in about 2500 BC by another wave of settlers, also farmers, known as the Courronniens, who arrived by sea and settled along the coast of what is now the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône.
Ligures and Celts in Provence
In the 4th century BC a people known by the Greeks and Romans as the Ligures inhabited Provence from the Alps to the Rhône. They were probably the descendants of the indigenous Neolithic peoples who had lived there through the Iron Age and the Bronze Age, but had not yet discovered iron.Musée d'histoire de Marseille, L'Antiquite, Pg. 21. See also J.R. Palanque, Ligures, Celts et Grecs, in Histoire de la Provence. Pg. 33. Strabo distinctly states they were not of celtic origin and a different race from the Gauls. They did not have their own alphabet, but their language remains in place names in Provence ending in the suffixes -asc, -osc. -inc, -ates, and auni.J.R. Palanque, Ligures, Celts et Grecs, in Histoire de la Provence. Pg. 33. The ancient geographer Posidonios wrote of them: "Their country is savage and dry. The soil is so rocky that you cannot plant anything without striking stones. The men compensate for the lack of wheat by hunting... They climb the mountains like goats."J. Cited by R. Palanque, Ligures, Celts et Grecs, in Histoire de la Provence. Pg. 34. They were also warlike; they invaded Italy and went as far as Rome in the 4th century BC, and they later aided the passage of Hannibal on his way to attack Rome (218 BC).
Some time between the 8th and 5th centuries BC, tribes of Celts, probably coming from Central Europe, also began moving into Provence. They had weapons made of iron, which allowed them to defeat the Ligures, who were still armed with bronze weapons. One tribe, called the Segobriga, settled near modern-day Marseille. The Caturiges, Tricastins, and Cavares settled to the west of the Durance river.J. R. Palanque, "Ligures, Celts et Grecs", in Histoire de la Provence. Pg. 34
The Ligures were more numerous than the Celtic peoples, and the Celto-Ligures eventually shared the territory of Provence, each tribe in its own alpine valley or settlement along a river, each with its own king and dynasty. They built hilltop forts and settlements, later given the Latin name oppida. Today the traces of 165 oppida have been found in the Var and as many as 285 in the Alpes-Maritimes.J. R. Palanque, Ligures, Celts et Grecs, in Histoire de la Provence. Pg. 34. They worshiped aspects of nature, establishing sacred woods at Sainte-Baume and Gémenos, and healing springs at Glanum and Vernėègues. Later, in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, the tribes formed confederations; the Vocontii from the Isère to the Vaucluse; the Cavares in the Comtat; and the Salyens, from the Rhône to the Var.
The Celto-Ligures used the Rhône to trade iron, silver, alabaster, marble, gold, resin, wax, honey and cheese with other tribes in Gaul. Etruscan traders from Italy began to visit the coast. Etruscan amphorae from the 7th and 6th centuries BC have been found in Marseille, Cassis, and in hilltop oppida in the region.
Traces of the Celts and Ligures remain today in the ruins of their hilltop fortresses, in dolmens and other megaliths found in eastern Provence, in the stone shelters called 'Bories' found in the Luberon and Comtat, and in the rock carvings in the Valley of Marvels near Mont Bégo in the Alpes-Maritimes, at an altitude of 2,000 meters. The ruins of the Salyes oppidum of Glanum (found beneath the ruins of the later Roman town) show traces of the old ramparts from the 6th to 3rd centuries B.C., as well as vestiges of Celto-Ligurian temples and public buildings.Anne Roth Congrès, Glanum - De l'oppidum salyen à la cité latine.
The Greeks in Provence
Traders from the island of Rhodes were visiting the coast of Provence in the 7th century BC. Rhodes pottery from that century has been found in Marseille, near Martigues and Istres, and at mont Garou and Évenos near Toulon. The traders from Rhodes gave their names to the ancient town of Rhodanousia (now Trinquetaille, across the Rhône from Arles) and to the main river of Provence, the Rhodanos, today known as the Rhône.J.R. Palanque, Ligures, Celtes et Grecs, in Histoire de la Provence, pg. 39.
The first permanent Greek settlement was Massalia, established at modern-day Marseille in about 600 BC by colonists coming from Phocaea (now Foça, in modern Turkey) on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor. A second wave of colonists arrived in about 540, when Phocaea was destroyed by the Persians.R. Palanque, Ligures, Celtes et Grecs, in Histoire de la Provence, pg. 41.
Massalia became one of the major trading ports of the ancient world. At its height, in the 4th century BC, it had a population of about 6,000 inhabitants, on about fifty hectares surrounded by a wall. It was governed as an aristocratic republic, by an assembly of the 600 wealthiest citizens. It had a large temple of the cult of Apollo of Delphi on a hilltop overlooking the port and a temple of the cult of Artemis of Ephesus at the other end of the city. Drachma coins minted in Massalia were found in all parts of Ligurian-Celtic Gaul. Traders from Massalia ventured into France on the Durance and Rhône rivers, established overland trade routes to Switzerland and Burgundy, and travelled as far north as the Baltic Sea. They exported their own products: local wine, salted pork and fish, aromatic and medicinal plants, coral and cork.
The Massalians established a series of small colonies and trading posts along the coast, which later became towns. They founded Citharista (La Ciotat), Tauroeis (), Olbia (near Hyères), Pergantion (Breganson), Caccabaria (Cavalaire), Athenopolis (Saint-Tropez), Antipolis (Antibes), Nikaia (Nice), and Monoicos (Monaco). They had a strong cultural influence on the interior of Provence — the Salyen oppidum of Glanum had villas and an outdoor public meeting area built in the classical Greek style.Anne Roth Congès, Glanum - De l'oppidum salyen à la cité latine, Editions du Patrimoine, Centre des Monuments Nationaux, 2010