Mass Horse Sacrifice from the Gallic Wars

Doing routine work in advance of highway construction, in a place where they had no reason to expect anything very interesting, French archaeologists made a remarkable discovery: a series of nine mass animal burial pits. Of the first three excavated, two contained horses and the third held two dogs. Radiocarbon dates came out between 100 BC and 100 AD; the investigators have connected the burials to Caesar's conquest of Gaul, which took place in 58 to 51 BC.

The first pit, which contained ten horses. All of the animals are mature males, and all were carefully laid on their right sides, facing south. The were laid in the grave in sequence, first one row and then the other, which can be worked out from the overlaps.

Work at the site was ongoing when INRAP posted about it, and they say 28 more horses have already been found.

The pits are in Villedieu-sur-Indre, central France. The site is not far from a fortified town (oppidum) where a battle took place in this period; Caesar didn't mention it, but Roman sling bullets and other signs of fighting were found when the town was excavated. (This sites is known as "Caesar's Camp," but that was a mistake by 19th-century archaeologists.)

What is this about? The archaeologists considered an epidemic, but then why would all the animals be mature males? War casualties seems unlikely, because none of the animals have broken legs or other obvious wounds. (Horses break their legs easily and it happens a lot when then are wounded or knocked down in combat.) So the investigators surmise that this was a sacrifice.

We know that the ancient Gauls went in for horse sacrifice. Other pits similar to these have been found before, although none on the same scale. Above is an example from Orcet uncovered in 2002, also dating to the first century BC.

Other examples have been found in the Gergovian Plain, where the Gauls defeated the Romans in a major cavalry battle in 52 BC.

And here is a fascinating find, also from 2002, a pit containing eight horses and eight men found near the fortified town of Gondole in Auvergne. You might think that these men and horses died together but, again, there were no obvious wounds on the horse skeletons. Perhaps the horses were sacrificed to accompany fallen warriors to the afterlife? Or were both  the horses and the men sacrifices?

I find it wonderful to imagine these events. Facing the threat of Roman conquest, the Gaulish chieftains solemnly bring forward their most valuable horses as offerings to the gods. They lead the beasts past thousands of warriors standing in their battle lines, weapons drawn, perhaps chanting, perhaps in profound silence. Then, to the wild music of drums and horns, the throats of the noble animals are slashed and they crumple to the ground one after another. As the warriors sing and shout they are laid in the ground, a treasure dedicated to the Gods in hopes that with their aid the Romans could be driven from the land.