Excavation reveals a pre-Castle settlement

Abstract

The previous paper showed that a settlement prior to the castle is mentioned three times in twelfth-century Latin documentation. The nature of the settlement is uncertain, as it is designated as casal, a very common term in many Latin areas around the Mediterranean (Italy, Sicily, Cyprus, Frankish Morea, Syria) between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries. Depending on the time and place, it covers different realities. In Frankish Palestine, a casal seems to be the most frequently mentioned form of rural grouped settlement found in the charters. However, the size of the site in question, of its population and its economic or legal status may vary considerably 1 . For their part, the terms burgus and castrum, also used to designate village sites, tend to underline the fortified character of a site or its possibility of defense 2 . We have also seen that the name of the casal we are interested in here was not entirely unrelated to the historical substrate of the area, since the toponym Cocquet probably derives from the Arabic name Kawkab, which descends from the Hebraic name Kokhava. Does the persistence, in a barely corrupted form, of the ancient toponym up to the Middle Ages underpin an uninterrupted occupation of the site? Perhaps the existence of important ruins and material remains were enough to preserve the memory of its name? It is difficult to tell from our sole sources.2 An important point also mentioned is the chronology of the occupation of the site. If we look solely at the written sources available to us, the first mention of Cocquet in Medieval times appears in two Latin charters issued by Walter, prince of Galilee, in 1165. These documents establish the boundaries of the casal of Gibul, specifying that it Excavation reveals a pre-Castle settlement Medievalista, 33 | 2023