Neolithic Field Trip

A French friend, Christine, took us on a field trip on Sunday to the Tumulus de Bougon - an archeological site dating to neolithic times - 7000 years ago - that consists of a group of burial mounds. They made a little room with rock walls, some big rocks from 35 to 40 km away and little rocks taken from a little quarry right beside the tumulus, covered the top with a huge slab of limestone, and then built a wall out of a circle of rocks and filled in the space with gravel. Then they built a smaller ring of stones on top of the gravel and filled that in, and so on, until there was a big mound going up to a sort of peak. Then the bodies or bones were buried inside. This site is the oldest known burial site in Europe, with the most intact tombs. Pretty cool. They don't know much about why they built them this way, or why some of them are rectangular and some are round and some are oval, why they are oddly shaped, why some of the inner chambers are round or rectangular or with a domed roof, why some of them had adults and children and stone and bone tools and dogs and why some were just adults. Those neolithic people didn't leave a lot of clues unfortunately. But as a result of this field trip I now know the order of prehistoric eras: early, middle, and late paleolithic, megalithic, neolithic, bronze age, iron age. Nothing like a field trip to help a person make sense of stuff she was supposed to have learned in school.

Christine brought along a neighbor boy, Nathan, aged 9, to be a companion for Reed and they had fun running around despite not being able to communicate very well and not being allowed to climb on the mounds. My favorite part of the day was the picnic, eaten under the glass roof of the renovated 18th c. barn near the tumulus site. This kind of roof would be expensive but wow, what a way to renovate an old barn. My imagination has been fired up. It was comfortable and airy and bright, with a garden in the middle. We had leftover lamb, a chard and bacon frittata that I made, zucchini cake that I made, cold cooked green beans (the first from the garden!) with balsamic vinegar and olive oil (the French eat balsamic vinegar a lot, as do the Italians, and it comes from Italy I think, but I don't know its history very well - I'll try to find out more about it!), potato chips, bread and fresh goat cheese, and some other tidbits.

The little black chick keeps getting lost and I think that after I've rescued it twice I might not be able to find it this time. This morning I got it out of the middle of the pigpen, just before the pigs noticed it. Ella the goat is recovering from her ailments - no more blood in the milk and some E45 cream (something K had around from when one of the pigs was all broke out in an allergic rash) on the udder is working wonders. The thistling isn't finished but we've made great progress, and tonight we're all invited to some friends for dinner.