The transformation of rural structures in Southern Gaul between the first century BC and the first century AD. The case of eastern Languedoc (France)
Résumé
Romanization was a gradual and complex phenomenon. It is often investigated in urban settings where Roman power was ostentatious. Where the process has been examined in rural contexts, research has focused primarily on the most prominent production and land management facilities, such as villae or centuriations. More rarely is use made of the overall dynamics of the rural structures under study and of the system of settlement through which urban and rural areas interact in synergy. It is this last approach that is highlighted in this study. By examining settlement dynamics within a broad time frame, from the Iron Age to the 2nd century AD, this paper seeks to clarify how the Roman system of organization adapted to what was already a well organized indigenous set-up, by amplifying a dynamic that had been primed well before the conquest, probably by Phocaean commercial impetus. We attempt to show how the native population adopted and adapted certain Roman ways of doing things in order to control and develop their territory. Far from following on from one another, the two facets of the process interacted, making for a complex picture of Romanization and of its failures and successes.