Continuités et discontinuités à la fin du IIe siècle avant J.-C. dans le sud de la Gaule
Résumé
During the 2nd and 1st centuries BC, southern Gaul was at the heart of Roman military interventions
elated to the call from Marseille and the Cimbrian War. The control of the Iberian Peninsula and commercial relations were the main stakes of the strategically located Mediterranean arc between Italy and Spain, with access to inland Gaul via the Rhone valley and towards the Atlantic through the Aude/Garonne axis. The volume of goods and the development of crossroads sites testify to the continuity of maritime, river and land exchanges. The events recounted in the texts leave no doubt about the armed conflicts, despite the rarity of archaeological evidence or difficulties in dating them. Although they led to the disappearance of certain types of settlements, especially in Provence, the clashes did not, however, bring about decisive transformations for those that remained. The
influence of Marseille persisted until Caesar and the creation of cities like Aix-en-Provence and Narbonne, where an Italic population settled, did not cause the abandonment of oppida. On the contrary, hilltop settlements, often ancient, experienced some growth in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC and were only abandoned around the middle of the 1st entury BC; new oppida even emerged during the 1st century BC. A site like Montlaurès continued to mint coins despite the proximity of the colony of Narbonne. In the 2nd century BC, the appearance of ”open agglomerations” such as La Lagaste, Lastours or Lagrasse in the Aude and rural settlements of the “enclosed ditch farms” type marked a change in the typology of southern habitats, with dynamics similar to those of continental Gaul, but this did not happen at the expense of earlier established settlements. During this period characterized by a densification of occupation and artisanal and agricultural activities, most fortifications do not seem to undergo specific modifications and many domains (particularly food, funerary or ritual) testify to a continuity that the novelties touch at the margin.