Fifteen thousand years of Vaud history! This is what you can find at the Cantonal Museum of Archaeology and History, established in 1852 and located at the Palais de Rumine since 1906. We forget that the people of Vaud were once nomadic hunter-gatherers, and then in around 5500 BC they established an agricultural-livestock raising settlement. Alongside Lake Geneva and the Neuchâtel and Morat lakes, countless fragile items from that time – the Neolithic era – have been uncovered, including ceramics, baskets, fabric, and wooden objects. Through a glass floor, visitors can discover a full-size “lake” dig and a Neolithic cemetery.
A time machine
The second part of the permanent exhibition invites visitors to travel back in time by first making a detour to the future, to the year 3081. They then go back to the not-too-distant 20th century and then find themselves in 1803, the year of Vaud’s independence, and next under the authority of Their Excellencies of Berne (from 1536 to 1798). Even further back, they experience the Savoy domination, the direct rule of the Holy Roman Empire and – the least known chapter – the reign of the Bourgogne kings (from 888 to 1032).
Educational activities for school groups and, during the holidays, for children from summer camps are a wonderful means of introducing children to the way our distant ancestors lived. For example, they can make rock paintings using their fingers and natural colours, bake bread with flour they produce themselves with grain and Neolithic grindstones, and sharpen a stone on a grindstone to make an axe blade with a wooden handle.
