Sampling in Burgundy

Maria and Tom travelled to Lyon and on to the picturesque town of Chalon-sur-Saône for a visit to the Denon Museum. We were visiting to follow up on ongoing work with our collaborator Harald Floss (University of Tübingen), who works on the important Aurignacian site of Grotte de Verpilliere (Germolles) with a Franco-German team. We have previously worked on material from the site with one of their team Claire Heckel.

The Denon museum has an unparalleled collection of wooden objects and artefacts found in the river Saône nearby, as well as the classic Solutrean leafpoint collection from the Volgu site. We were happy to see and examine some of this material. The museum takes its name from Dominique-Vivant Denon, who was also the first Director of the Louvre and Napoleon's Minister of Culture. He was an artist, archaeologist, author, diplomat, and his work in Egypt during the French campaign there essentially began the field of Egyptology. The museum made available some of their wonderful Aurignacian collection from Verpillieres for us to sample. Maria is an ERASMUS student working with PalaeoChron for 6 months and the Germolles material will be part of her applied project.

In the evening, after a long day of sampling, we were delighted to join Harald at his public lecture in nearby Maçon which was excellent.