a) The campaigns of excavations

The first excavations, carried out by Henri Baudot from 1836 to 1842 at the bottom of the cliff, revealed a series of rooms, a huge entrance and a building where a stone water pipe, fed by an underground spring, used to flow.¹⁷⁸⁷ From 1926 to 1939, Henri Corot successively undertook nine campaigns of excavations, during which he uncovered a vast trapezoid-shaped esplanade and an ellipsoidal basin (4.50mx3m), crossed by a pipe, harnessing a second spring.¹⁷⁸⁸ From 1948 to 1953, Roland Martin and Gabriel Grémaud excavated a fanum*, composed of a five-metre squared cella*, enclosed by a gallery, and a huge yard (15mx10m), with a spring in its middle, surrounded by a mosaic-floored portico. According to Martin, this building and its sacred pool must have been the main place of devotion of the shrine.¹⁷⁸⁹ Finally, Deyts, who undertook to clean up the site from 1963 to 1967, discovered about 300 wooden statues underneath the concrete floor of the trapezoid esplanade unearthed by Corot.¹⁷⁹⁰ This discovery was of great significance, for very little material of this kind had been found until then. The marshy area where the wooden carvings were found had rendered the preservation of those statuettes possible; water and peat had kept the wood intact.¹⁷⁹¹