For the Nuit des Musées 2021, the Musée de l'Aurignacien welcomes you for free to discover the collections and Prehistory differently, in the light of the moon and flashlights.
Our teams offer you a rich and diverse program:
14h - 17h: Experimentation at the Museum The museum proposes an afternoon experimentation from 14h to 17h. The public is invited to discover and experiment the size of flint tools, but also the crafting of saga tips. These weapons used during the Palaeolithic show a specific know-how, mixing the mastery of flint cutting, the making of glues and ropes. The museum teams invite you to discover the different steps necessary to realize this emblematic weapon.
18h: Conference of Noisette BEC DRELON, Archaeologist at EVEHA Occitanie and doctor in Prehistory: "Dolmens from the end of the world! From Occitania to Indonesia, Past and Present"
Even today, megaliths are prehistoric monuments that carry many mysteries. These funerary monuments, which can be menhir statues, dolmens, tumulus, alignments, etc., dating from recent Prehistory, are the subject of numerous studies. Noisette Bec Drelon, archaeologist and doctor of prehistory, is a specialist of Neolithic. His research focuses on the architecture of megalithic monuments and the funeral practices of the late Neolithic period in the north-western basin of the Mediterranean. His work led him to carry out several excavations of dolmens in Languedoc, Roussillon and Corsica. Attached to the TRACES laboratory (UMR5608) of the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès and the Archimède laboratory (UMR 7044) of the University of Strasbourg, she also carries out research in Indonesia, on the Sumba River, in order to inform and study this megalithic phenomenon still practiced by these populations. From Occitania to Indonesia, she will share her knowledge of past and present megalithic phenomena!
20h: Presentation of the exhibition created by the students of Salies du Salat, as part of «the Class, the work!»
The students of the Salies du Salat nursery school will present their artistic works carried out throughout the year, as part of the national program: the Class the work. Made from materials used by the populations of the Palaeolithic, bone, ochre, and flint, the budding artists composed ephemeral mandalas and formed their own collection of bones which will be exhibited in the museum space, in the middle of the Aurignacian remains.
9pm: Guided tour of the museum collections
22h - midnight: Discovery of the Museum in the light of the torches