The reevaluation of the genesis of Marseille, based on recent data from INRAP and lithic studies from the Midi, allows for the construction of a portrait of Massalia that is far more complex than a simple Phocaean colony. The following synthesis of these discoveries proposes a continuity of occupation and exchange extending from the Neolithic to the Iron Age.
From the Neolithic Emporion to the Etruscan Phase: A Sedimentary Genealogy of Marseille
The classical historiography, relying on the accounts of Justin and Aristotle, fixes the origin of Marseille at the mythical meeting between the Phocaean Protis and the daughter of the indigenous king of the Segobriges around 600 BC. However, contemporary preventive archaeology data—notably the excavations at Boulevard Nédélec and the banks of the Huveaune—force a reconsideration of this chronology. Marseille no longer appears as a sudden creation but as the culmination of a sedimentation of exchange networks whose roots reach deep into the Neolithic. Long before the arrival of Ionian ships, the Marseille basin and its hinterland, such as the site of Terres Longues in Trets, were already integrated into long-distance diffusion circuits. Research on the Chasséen context reveals that Sardinian obsidian, primarily from Monte Arci, circulated massively in the South of France. This Neolithic pre-navigation suggests that the natural coves of Marseille already served as transshipment points or stopovers for traders of Mediterranean black gold. The discovery of structured occupations on the banks of the Huveaune confirms a lasting human presence from the Middle Neolithic and the Bronze Age, invalidating the idea of a virgin territory that the Greeks would have “civilized.” In this continuity of exchange, the 6th century BC marks an acceleration rather than a rupture. As highlighted by L.-F. Gantés, the deepest levels of the archaic city in the Bourse sector are saturated with Etruscan material. During the second quarter of the century, imports from southern Etruria, including amphorae and bucchero nero, quantitatively predominate over Greek productions. Michel Gras and François Villard agree that the Phocaeans inserted themselves into an emporic structure already regulated by Tyrrhenian city-states. This cultural and merchant “bilingualism” is visible at the Boulevard Nédélec site, where traces of frequentation testify to a contact zone between colonists, Etruscan traders, and indigenous populations already acculturated to Mediterranean luxury goods. The erasure of this “phase étrusque” in favor of the “Greek miracle” is a construction that Dominique Briquel describes as a literary distortion in Les Étrusques, peuple de l’ombre. Michel Py demonstrated in Les Gaulois du Midi that the engine of coastal urbanization and the evolution of Celtic societies lay in the trade of Etruscan wine and bronzes. It was the Tyrrhenians who first structured the routes of the Rhone and the Huveaune to transport northern metals toward central Italy, using Marseille as the pivot of this logistics. Marseille must be reread as a palimpsest. Over the Phocaean Massalia is superimposed, or rather underlies, an Etruscan city, itself the heir to a Neolithic hub linked to Sardinian seafaring. This long-term vision restores to the Western Mediterranean its character as a space of intense and early circulation, where the island of Elba and Corsica served as bridges between the resources of stone and the brilliance of metals.
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Bibliographie et Sources
Gantés, L.-F. (1992). La topographie de Marseille grecque : bilan des recherches récentes. Études massaliètes.
INRAP (2021). Des occupations du Néolithique et de l’Âge du bronze sur les rives de l’Huveaune. Rapport de fouilles.
Lea, V. et al. (2015). Renouvellement des données sur la diffusion de l’obsidienne sarde en contexte chasséen : le site des Terres Longues. ResearchGate/Archéologies méditerranéennes. [1]
Py, M. (1993). Les Gaulois du Midi. Hachette. [3]
Villard, F. (1960). La Céramique grecque de Marseille. De Boccard. [2]
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