Anne-Gaëlle Corbara / Inrap
Excavations in France have revealed a rare execution structure. And it is also a rare material testimony to the repressive practices of that time.
One archaeological excavation in the Esplanade area, at the northern entrance to Grenoble, in the southeast of France, revealed the traces of a 16th century gallows.
The device was used to expose and, indirectly, carry out the punishment of those sentenced to death.
The discovery was made by the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap), which considers the discovery a rare material testimony of repressive practices during the period of religious wars.
The site is located next to the Isère and Drac rivers, in an area that, until the beginning of the 17th century, was mostly swampy and subject to frequent floods.
Over the centuries, the landscape was progressively drained e transformed. In that area there were several activities: sand and wood extraction, aristocratic leisure space, military exercises and camps, republican festivals and, more recently, an amusement park.
The alternation of alluvial deposits and landfills identified in the excavation allowed archaeologists to reconstruct this gradual process of occupation and adaptation of an unstable terrain.
It was in this context that, on the edge of the intervention area, a quadrangular masonry structure with no clear parallels in local historiography emerged.
Inside and near the north wall of the building, 10 trenches with multiple burials, some dating from the 16th century.
In total, at least 32 bonesespecially men, arranged in a disorderly manner, without dominant orientation and without signs of funerary ritual. The absence of post-mortem care pointed to degrading treatment of the dead.
Faced with such an unusual set, researchers considered different hypotheses for the nature of space — among shelter for hermits, capela, or even a mass grave linked to a military context.
Definitive identification, however, was only possible by crossing archaeological data and documentary sources.
Inrap indicates that the study of accounting records of works, associated with a carpentry project whose dimensions coincide with the foundations found, allowed the structure to be recognized as the old gallows of Grenoble, known in the archives as the “gibet of Port de la Roche”.
Description of the gallows
The gallows would have been built between 1544 e 1547. On a square base measuring 8.2 meters on a side, eight stone pillars stood, topped with capitals that supported a complex wooden structure approximately five meters high.
The building was located on a slight elevation of the floodplain to reduce the impact of floods and had, on the eastern side, a drainage ditch that may also have functioned as a symbolic delimitation of the space of justice.
The presence of eight pillars is described as a unique and revealing feature of the status of local jurisdiction: in the Old Regime, the number of columns varied depending on the judicial hierarchy, being greater in the most powerful instances. In Grenoble, the design of the monument would thus reflect the importance of the judicial power in the city.
Death without honor
The executions took place in the urban center, on the Place aux Herbes, and the bodies were later exposed outside the wallson the now identified gallows.
Judicial files cited by Inrap allow us to associate some of those executed with a period in which the death penalty would be relatively rarehighlighting above all cases linked to the contestation of royal authority and the repression of Protestants.
The human remains found indicate that not all of the exposed bodies were buried there – but those that were appear to have been deprived of Christian burial and thrown into simple pits, sometimes in parts, overlapping or disturbed.
For researchers, this “infamous burial” prolongava a punishment beyond deathmaterializing the idea of “ma morte” in a time of intensification of religious repression, with possible use of the site until the beginning of the 17th century, describes the .
