The history of Savoy presents a synthesis of the various periods, from prehistory to the present day, of the geographical and historical entity known as Savoy, a territory whose definition has varied for historical periods, until it was defined by the two French departments of Savoie and Haute-Savoie.Pittard, 2017, Histoire de la Savoie et de ses Etats, p.982

According to Abbé Adolphe Gros, the territory of Savoie comprises the "country situated between the Rhône and the Alps, south of Lake Geneva and north of the Dauphiné ". Savoie thus forms a "solid block, a sort of thick tree trunk stretching 145 km from north to south, and swelling to a hundred km from east to west, covering an area of just over 10,000 km2".Raoul Blanchard, "La Savoie. Tableau géographique", in Comité d'organisation des fêtes du centenaire du Rattachement de la Savoie à la France, Mémorial de Savoie. Le Livre du Centenaire 1860 - 1960, Chambéry, Presses des imprimeries réunis de Chambéry, 1959, p. 25. The region's varied landscapes are marked by Alpine influences, from the lowland Pre-Alps to the snow-capped peaks of the Alps, linked by large intra-Alpine valleys. These valleys are at the origin of the traditional provincial divisions: Savoie Propre, Maurienne, Tarentaise, Genevois, Faucigny and Chablais.

The region's history begins with prehistoric settlement, from the 16th millennium B.C. by hunter-gatherers to the sedentarization of lakeside cities. During its protohistory, which began around the middle of the 3rd millennium BC, the copper-rich subsoil enabled the development of a proto-industry producing artefacts, as well as commercial import circuits from Germanic regions. Gallic tribes such as the Allobroges, Ceutrons, Graiocèles and Médulles inhabited the area in the first centuries BC, before Roman intervention began in the 1st century BC. The Romans won their first victory over the Allobroges in 121 BC, then definitively in 62 BC. Other peoples were conquered from 16 to 7 BC. During the Gallo-Roman period, present-day Savoie corresponded to Sapaudie (Latin: Sapaudia), then occupied by the Burgundians, until its integration into Frank or Carolingian Saboia.

With the disappearance of the empire, then of the kingdom of Burgundy, great seigniorial families emerged - Humbertiens, then the House of Savoy, Géroldiens or the House of Geneva, Faucigny - and tried to increase their possessions and power (building the counties of Maurienne, then Savoy or Geneva). The Humbertians, established in the Maurienne region and at the origin of the future House of Savoy, gradually took control of the entire region, eliminating rival houses, and assumed the definitive title of Counts of Savoy from the eleventh century until they obtained the title of "Duke" in 1416. Control of the Alpine passes and slopes led to the traditional nickname of "Gatekeepers of the Alps".... The House of Savoy gradually came to control a territory with shifting borders, stretching from German-speaking Switzerland to Nice, and from the gates of Lyon to the plain of Turin.

Increasingly looking "beyond the mountains" (i.e. across the Alps to Italy), the House of Savoy abandoned its cradle in favor of the Italian policy. Annexed for some, united for others, Savoy passed to neighboring France with the Treaty of Turin in 1860. A poor province at the start of the 19th century, Savoy grew thanks to the exploitation of white coal in the 19th century and the development of spa and winter tourism from the beginning of the 20th century, as well as the fine metallurgical industry, based on the watchmaking industry established in Faucigny as early as the 18th century, and the heavy industry in the Tarentaise and Maurienne valleys in the 19th century.Romain Maréchal et Yannick Milleret, Atlas historique de Savoie, 1792-1914. ed. Société savoisienne d'histoire et d'archéologie, 2013, p.184 These activities helped stop the hemorrhaging of immigrants. In the second half of the twentieth century, identity movements asserted a specific cultural identity, or even political sovereignty.

Prehistory

Stone Age Key dates:

50,000 Neanderthal hunters in Chablais 13,000 The first reindeer hunters 5,000 First communities of sedentary farmers 2500/2000 BC Copper Age 2000/1350 BC Early and Middle Bronze Age: import of bronzes 1350/800 BC Late Bronze Age: metallurgy and lake cities 800/50 BC Iron Age: Hallstatians and Alpines 300 BC Settlement of the Allobroges 218 BC Crossing of the Alps by Hannibal, through Savoy according to some authors During the Quaternary period, the Alps experienced periods of glacial flooding and recession. With the last advances of the Würm glaciation, the various traces disappeared.. However, one site was spared, enabling the discovery of ancient traces of human presence in this region in a cave in the commune of Onnion, in the present-day département of Haute-Savoie.La Rédaction, «Le site de la grotte du Barè désormais préservé», Le Messager,‎ 14 novembre 2013 Located at an altitude of 1,900 m, in the cliffs of the Rocher Blanc, the Baré cave was the subject of several excavation campaigns in the 1950s. They uncovered flint tools and bones belonging to several animal species over a period ranging from 70,000 to 30,000 BC. Some examples are the bear and the cave lion, but also species still present such as the boreal lynx, the brown bear, the wolf, the fox, the badger, the marten, the red deer, the ibex, the chamois, the European hare, the marmot. Since 2013, the cave has been walled off to protect access and preserve the site.

The Rhône glacier, at the end of the last ice age, opened up Lake Geneva around 18,000/15,000 B.C. Between 15,000 and 6,000 B.C., excavations in the 19th and 20th centuries have attested to the presence of seasonal hunters. There are deposits from the Magdalenian, Azilian and Mesolithic periods. These reindeer and then deer hunters were present in the foreland (around 600 m altitude). At the foot of the Salève, in Étrembières near Geneva, the first Paleolithic work of art was found in 1843 and immediately recognized. There are caves or shelters at Musièges and La Balme-de-Thuy, Haute-Savoie, Saint-Thibaud-de-Couz and Saint-Christophe in Savoie, dating back between 13,000 and 6,000 years..

During the Neolithic period (between 5,000 and 2,500 BC), sedentary farming communities settled on the plains and in the major valleys at mid-altitude: numerous deposits attest to this. Excavations carried out in some forty municipalities along the lakeshore have uncovered forty-seven sites from this period and forty-four from the Bronze Age. These include, respectively, 4 and 2 sites on Lake Aiguebelette, 9 and 19 on Lake Bourget, 22 and 13 on Lake Léman and 12 and 10 on Lake Annecy.Yves Billaud et André Marguet, «Recherches archéologiques récentes dans les lacs de Savoie», La Rubrique des patrimoines de Savoie, no17,‎ 2006, p.12

The oldest remains, such as the Aime necropolis, date back to the Middle Neolithic.

In Thonon, on the shores of Lake Geneva, a Middle Neolithic necropolis of the "Chamblande type" was uncovered at a site known as Genevray in 2004. The site uncovered 220 burials, dated between 3,300 and 4,800 BC, i.e. from the middle of the 5th millennium BC to the end of the 4th millennium BC.

Other evidence of Alpine megalithic occupation includes hundreds of cup stones in the Tarentaise and Maurienne valleys at altitudes of over 2,000 m, such as the Pierre aux Pieds, at 2,750 m on the Pisselerand plateau, at 2,100 m, with 150 cupules, as well as the Pierre aux Chouettes or Pierre Chevète in Saint-Martin-de-Belleville, in the hamlet of Villarenger.

The Petit-Saint-Bernard pass (2,188 m) features a cromlech that is not necessarily Neolithic.

Protohistory Copper was mined around 2500 BC, and found in the form of flat axes (Sevrier, Faverges, Saint-Pierre-d'Albigny and Maurienne).

The Early Bronze Age (2000/1600 BC) began with the first axes and pins imported from the Valais, an active production zone. These metallurgists exploited the copper deposits of the Upper Tarentaise.

In the Middle Bronze Age (1600/1350 BC), bronzes were again imported, but from southwest Germany.

From the 14th century B.C. onwards, imports from Germany continued, but local metal production gradually began under the major influence, probably even brought by migrants from Middle Europe, of the urnfield culture (Champs d'Urnes). A hot, dry climate led to a drop in lake levels, and by 1050 BC, they had set up metal and pottery workshops on the shores of these lakes, which were easily supplied with fuel by floating. These lakeside settlements lasted until the 7th century, when they were submerged by rising waters caused by a major climatic change. The most numerous of these were on Lac du Bourget, where abundant material is on display at the Musée Savoisien in Chambéry.

From the Middle Bronze Age onwards, the Alpine valleys were criss-crossed by a trade flow between the Po plain and Savoy, which received Italian bronzes (weapons and jewelry). Around 950 BC, the copper mines of the Maurienne were exploited by lake metallurgists.

During the Iron Age, from the 6th century B.C. onwards, Savoy was home to Hallstattian horse-breeders who settled in the plains, leaving their mark in burial mounds (Gruffy, Saint-Ferréol, Talloires, La Tour, etc.), while independent peoples from the late Bronze Age occupation flourished in the mountain valleys: the Ceutrons in Tarentaise and Faucigny, and the Medulles in Maurienne. They controlled and ensured trade between the Po plain and the Rhone valley, which brought them a wealth of original and abundant funerary jewelry, characteristic of a true "Alpine civilization".

Pre-Christian Alpine traditions date from this period (Austria, Switzerland, Savoy, Northern Italy, Slovenia), whose characters - Krampus, Berchta (Perchten), wild man - are part of an endangered, folklorized cultural heritage, on the verge of extinction due to the disappearance of traditional ways of life that have been preserved for longer in the Alps.

The Gauls did not colonize Savoy until the 4th century BC, when they established a small settlement south of Lake Geneva. By the 2nd century, the Allobroges had occupied virtually all of the pre-Alpine plains: the area around Geneva and Lake Geneva, the Chambéry cluse, the Savoy combe, and so on. Further inland, in the valleys within the Alps, independent peoples were beginning to be Celtized, especially in the Tarentaise region, where the road to Italy passed, possibly the route taken by Hannibal when he crossed the Alps in 218 BC.. The Ceutrons were found in the Tarentaise valley and upper Faucigny, the Médulles in the lower Maurienne and the Graiocèles in the upper Maurienne, most probably on Mont-Cenis (Col du Mont-Cenis)..

The Roman Savoy

This part of the Alps rebelled against Roman rule. The Roman conquest of Allobrogia took place in several stages between 122 and 60 BC.

Key dates:

121 B.C. Allobroges defeat the Romans 9/-6 complete submission of the Alps

The Romanization of Savoy really began around 6-4 BC, when all the valleys were conquered and controlled, while the first contact with the Romans dates back to the crossing of the Alps by the consul Fulvius Flaccus around the Montgenèvre pass. The Savoy region was of strategic interest to the Romans, with passes and roads leading from the peninsula to Gaul, notably the one from Mediolanum (Milan) to Vienna (Vienne), crossing the French Tarentaise region. Roman Savoy lasted until the 2nd - 5th centuries, when Germanic peoples, the "Barbarians", made their first incursions into the territory, such as the Alemanni, followed by the final settlement of the Burgundians by general Aetius around 434.

Medieval period: from the Burgundian kingdoms to the feudal societies of Savoy