In Normandyin the north of France, a message in a bottle dating back 199 years ago left by an archaeologist of the time: in fact, in the Roman site of Camp de César in the Seine-Maritime region, a group of French researchers led by Guillaume Blondel he discovered inside a ceramic container a small glass bottle – like those used to contain salt at the beginning of the 19th century – with a perfectly preserved piece of paper inside, rolled up and tied with a string.
The site of the discovery, despite its name, has no obvious connections with Julius Caesar. It is a fortified site of the Iron Age and the Gallo-Roman period (4th century BC – 4th century AD), located near a cliff near Bracquemont, in the municipality of Petit Caux. It was immediately clear that these were not finds from the Gallic or Roman era, but something much more recent. Once the small piece of paper was unrolled, the archaeologists were able to read what was written on it, still perfectly legible:
PJ Féret, a native of Dieppe (a nearby town), member of several scientific societies, excavated here in January 1825. He continued his research throughout this vast area called the City of Limés or the Field of Caesar.
Doing some research, it was discovered that Pierre Jacques Feret was one of the early pioneers of archaeology at the Camp de César site. With his research, Féret contributed to creating a precise topographic map of the site and to identify phases of use prior to the Roman ones, that is, the Gallic era. According to Guillaume Blondel, this is an exceptional discovery. The area where the bottle was found, already excavated in the past (by Blondel himself in the 19th century) is one of the most at-risk areas of the sitewhich being on a cliff is subject to a very strong erosion.
The 199-year-old archaeologist wanted to leave a sign of his passage on the site, in a sort of “passing of the baton” between several generations of scholars.
