The ritual statues of Banc de Eponix

In the early 80s a general survey of the archeological sight at Banc de Ephonix discovered two mostly complete statues of small adult man dating pre-Roman iron age Gual. Those not familiar with the Banc de Ephonix sight it was a Iron Age Celtic sight that local tradition maintain was the strong hold of a cult of woman warriors (sadly archeological evidence for any Celtic Xena Warrior Princess has not been found, though plenty of remains of Celtic weapons have been)

The statues are about 1.5 meters tall, made of local field stone can carved to resemble adult males in traditional Celtic clothing. The statues were likely painted in period. Both were buried in farm field used during the Celtic period. The archeologists were impressed by the skillful stone work but were amazed by the number of cuts and chips take from the statues, all of with were period.

The consensus there two statues of were of Celtic fertility gods, set into the field to bless the crops or some such ritual purpose. The carving do resemble tradition representation of the Celtic deity Bres. The "gods" were then offered ritual meals of what appear to be tomatoes in return for their protection. The sword and axe damage maybe from an opposing Celtic village or the Romans.

Another body of opinion is the statues were used for horse combat practice, Banc de Eponix is noted for its horse remains and even the Romans mentioned the fine horse farms in the region. Presumably the statues represented the locals traditional enemy, made smaller to increase the difficulty for the horseman who was training with them.

A minority opinion holds the sword damage is far to methodical to be from just a single ritual defacement in a raid. Additionally no such other farm field site has ever been observed in a Celtic sight archeologically or in the historical record. The example of the obscure " Chaunte la femme tête rouge peu" (Song of the little red head) in with the heroine claims she is persecuted by gnomes in her farm field whose skin is hard as stone and who immune to axe and sword.

What ever the truth maybe the the ritual statues of Banc de Eponix are something that will puzzle scholars for years.