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Mont Lassois is a prominent escarpment outlier located in the commune of Vix near Châtillon-sur-Seine in the North of the French département of Côte-d'Or. With an altitude of roughly 100m, it overlooks the upper valley of the Seine. A 12th-century church, classified as a historical monument, stands atop it. An archaeological excavation is also in progress; famous archaeological finds of the Hallstatt culture have been made.

Geography and flora
Mont Lassois has a North-South oriented J shape. Its main peak, with a 306.4-metre summit, is named Mont Saint-Marcel and its secondary peak, 280 metres high and oriented East-West, is called Mont Roussillon. The church of Saint-Marcel is located at the junction of these two peaks.

The upper slopes are covered with copses and forest with wide grassy glades, and the lower slopes with cereal and fodder crops. After being abandoned in the early 20th century, vineyards were implanted again in the 1980s. These consist of pinot noir and chardonnay dedicated to the production of Crémant de Bourgogne.

Cetlic period
The oppidum overlooking the River Seine was settled in the Neolithic. It seems to have controlled the ancient tin trade route from Great Britain to Italy at the end of the Hallstatt period. The Palace of Vix and the fortified city surrounding it are a testimony to this period. Ruled by a female aristocracy in the 6th century BC, the local Celtic population probably benefited from this location to levy tolls on passing convoys. The resulting wealth can be seen through the lavishness of the tombs built in the fashion of chariot tombs. Among other finds, a very rich tumulus enshrining the remains of a woman, probably a queen or a priestess, shows the status of women in Celtic society. The population of Mont Lassois seems to have temporarily dwindled to the benefit of the Lingones of Vertillum, 20km away.

Archaeological excavation
This hiatus in settlement between the late Hallstatt and the Gallo-Roman period has left traces of Celtic culture more accessible to excavation than on other sites where the two historical layers directly followed one another.

From the 19th century onwards, protohistoric chariot tombs have been discovered not far from here at Sainte-Colombe-sur-Seine. One of them produced a large bronze lebes of Etruscan or Anatolian origin, now kept at the Musée du Pays Châtillonnais, and another contained gold jewelry, bracelets and earrings, now kept at the Musée d'Archéologie National in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Excavation of the mid and lower part of the hill started in 1930 by Jean Lagorgette, seconded by Maurice Moisson, led to the recovery of Gallo-Roman material. The excavation resumed after the war, and in January 1953, interest in the archaeological potential of the site was renewed following the discovery of the krater and the Vix grave in a bend of the Seine by Maurice Moisson and René Joffroy.

Since 2002, new excavations on the oppidum hilltop have led to the discovery of the vestiges of the Palace of Vix, a large unit among a complex of several buildings akin to a city, which is a new phenomenon at this time in the Celtic world. This excavation, carried out under the direction of Bruno Chaume by teams of archaeologists from Germany (University of Kiel and Stuttgart), Austria (University of Vienna), France (University of Burgundy) and Switzerland (University of Zurich) has since unearthed a massive peripheral rampart circling the base of the hill. It features an opening on its north side toward the riverbed of the Seine. Signs of agriculture in the plain below were also uncovered, near the discovery site of the Vix krater, and a sanctuary has already been identified and investigated.