Bernard Petit

Santones Bernard Petit

During the last quarter of the 2nd century BC, life in Western and Central Europe was profoundly disrupted by a major migratory process, with far-reaching consequences. Today, the confrontation of contributions from a wide variety of fields of study allows a complete re-reading of a theme that has been studied very occasionally and for which no book had yet been written. This episode, called a santon by the populations concerned and a cimbrique by the moderns, has not received the care required by its historical and human importance due to the poor conservation of the great Latin and Greek historical narratives. In the central-western Atlantic, the people known as the Santon offer a case study of the settlement at the end of the 2nd century B. C. of new populations, mainly present in the upper categories of the local society.