ABSTRACT
‘For our period and our subject, excavation sites are the future of research’. 1 This opinion was expressed by Alain Demurger when summing up the Fanjeaux colloquium of 2005 about religious military orders in the south of France. Of course, a great deal still remains to be discovered in the rich archives of the military orders preserved in Marseilles, Toulouse, and elsewhere. Yet no account book will teach us as much about the food practices of the Hospitallers, as do the faunal and vegetable remains found in the thirty-two silos of the commandery of Bajoles (Pyrénées-Orientales). 2 And it is true that the mentions of material supplies that can be found here and there in the charters of the Hospitallers of Avignon suggest that the commandery was in a construction phase. 3 However, when it is possible, only the analysis of standing buildings or the exposure of their foundations is capable of informing us about the chronology of a site, about the source of the materials, and about the techniques applied to them. These examples may seem self-evident to specialists in material culture or monastic architecture, but in France the findings of archaeology have only recently begun to have any impact on research into the military orders.
