From collective to individual identities at the core of the Atlantic world. A socioeconomical and evolutive approach to Iron Age funerary costumes in Normandy, France (7th - 3rd c. BC)

International audienceResearch on costume items preserved in Iron Age funerary contexts across western Europe has long been concentrated on Bohemia, eastern France and south-western Germany, and has been lacking on the Medio-Atlantic cultural world. Antoine Verney's work in the early 1990s, followed by a research group in the early 2010s, shows, however, that Normandy, is not without exploitable data to approach Iron Age funerary costumes (Verney 1993; Chanson et al. 2011). Due to large-scale construction projects conducted on the outskirts of Caen (Calvados) over the last thirty years, preventive archaeology operations have favoured the uncovering and excavation of numerous burial sites, thus making this study possible.59 burial sites have been identified so far for the First Iron Age and Early La Tène in Normandy. 1480 individuals are buried in them, 535 of whom carry at least one object that may be linked to funerary costume. The total number of those items worn by an individual and preserved in the grave counts to 1474 objects.Based on this corpus, the item’s association analysis takes into account functional categories, as well as their quantity, the raw materials they were made with and their position on the body of the wearers. This system allowed the elaboration of a costume classification, which was later confronted to biological data, thus enabling a sociological analysis of these costumes in terms of gender and ageing, but also wealth, social status and group identity.This analysis shows the originality of Lower Normandy funerary costumes, characterised by the lack of weaponry and the predominance of ring ornaments up until the first half of the 4th century BC, at which point these ornaments progressively diminished in favour of the wearing of brooches alone. A detailed analysis of costumes worn by each individual has shown that the distinction between male and female in the funerary context is less clear-cut than in eastern regions. These specificities are also reflected in the treatment of children, who are given particular attention in death.By replacing western Normandy funerary costumes in their chronological and cultural context, this work has highlighted both a wide insertion in the Atlantic exchange networks and local particularisms, attesting a strong collective identity on the regional scale. The study thus provided an insight into the ways the construction of an individual’s appearance in death is part of social dialogues about identity and membership, on a territorial scale, at the core of the Atlantic area