Glacial Landscapes and Protohistoric Cultural Heritage of the Mount Bego Region, Southern French Alps

Abstract

The region of Mount Bego, which is located in the Southern French Alps, is an interesting place to observe scenic inherited landforms as well as cultural remains left by the ancient human societies who lived there. Geomorphology, Archaeology and Anthropology are working jointly to reconstruct the history of landscapes and societies. In particular, the Bronze Age people used the perfect stony tables created by glacial erosion. Indeed, they engraved approximately 40,000 petroglyphs on rocks polished by the ice during the Last Glacial Maximum. At that time, the climate was very cold, corresponding to the full expansion of glaciers. Only the peaks of Mount Grand Capelet and Mount Bego were protruding from the ice. The glacial imprint is widespread in the landscapes of the Mount Bego region, which displays about 40 cirques, abundant moraines and erratic boulders and 30 glacial lakes. Periglacial conditions, which developed after glacier melting, favoured the formation of rock glaciers before the Postglacial warming which induced peat formation. The first traces of the landscape transformation by the human societies date back to the Neolithic, three millennia before the Protohistoric societies left the outstanding petroglyphs of the so-called Vallée des Merveilles (Valley of Wonders).