CHAPTER TEN
THE FIRST TOWNS
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John Collis
W
hether one accepts that urban settlements existed before the Roman conquest
or not, it is certain that the second and first centuries BC represented a period
of radical change in settlement pattern and social, political and economic organization
in central and western Europe. By the time Caesar reached Gaul (Figure 10.1), the
predecessors of Roman and modern towns were already in existence as administrative
and trading centres - Vesontio (Besan~on), Durocortorum (Reims), Lutetia (Paris),
Avaricum (Bourges) and others. In the Celtic-speaking parts of Spain sites such as
Numantia formed the major centres of resistance, while Camulodunum (Colchester)
was considered the capital of Britain, sufficiently important for the Emperor Claudius
himself to take part in its capture. Over a broad zone, Portugal, central Spain,
southern Britain, France, southern and central Germany, the Alpine zone, Hungary
and Czechoslovakia major settlements, often labelled by ancient authors and modern
archaeologists alike as 'oppida', had come into existence (Collis 1984).
But this term 'oppidum' covers a wide range of different sorts of defended settle-
ments, very variable in size, character of occupation, and presumably function. It does
also exclude a number of open settlements or partially defended sites which share many
of the characteristics of the oppida, and which demonstrate that, although nucleation
for reasons of defence was the major factor in urban origins, economic and social
factors also played a role; indeed, without physical resources and centralized political
control, the oppida themselves could not have been founded.
In this chapter I will start by considering the evidence region by region before
considering the general processes which were going on.
SLOVAKIA AND HUNGARY
This region, which includes the Puchov culture of the Tatry Mountains and parts of
the Hungarian Plain, is characterized by a plethora of small hill-forts which appear
sometime in the first century BC. Like Roman forts or medieval castles, some of these
became the nucleus for more extensive occupation, loose agglomerations of farm-
steads and industrial zones, extending up to a kilometre or more from the central
nucleus, what I have termed the Zemplfn type of settlement (Collis 1972). What lay