- The Celts in France -
we are not in a position to say whether the latter were native, whether they were
mixed with an earlier population or whether they had replaced such groups.
THE PRINCIPAL RESEARCH DIRECTIONSAgainst a rich and solid literary tradition, the archaeology of the Iron Age in France
has revived, thanks to the development of aerial prospection and to the great increase
in excavation and field research. In schoolbooks, parallels are no longer drawn
between the benefits of French colonization and the opportunities that romanization
conferred on Gaul. Increased appreciation of the fact that the flowering of Roman
Gaul was underpinned by earlier developments in the country has also served to
refocus research. Our views are based nowadays on a permanent dialogue between
texts and archaeological evidence. The celticization of Gaul seems both earlier and
more widespread than had previously been believed.
In Champagne and adjacent regions, cultural continuity from late Hallstatt to
early La Tene has been demonstrated from cemetery evidence. Very similar burial
traditions have been widely identified in Gaul, only Armorica and the south of
Aquitaine retaining distinctive funerary rituals. Above all, our knowledge of the
cemeteries of Middle and Late La Tene periods has advanced in recent years. The
presence of enclosures and post-built structures within cemeteries suggests social dis-
tinctions which remain to be analysed in detail. Moreover, it is certain that aristo-
cratic tombs, marked by the presence of a chariot and/or by the accoutrements of
banqueting, continue throughout the Second Iron Age from Brittany to Alsace and
from Picardy to Aquitaine.
This aristocracy was settled on big rural estates, which acted as the foci for the
main economic and political strengths of the country, prior to the appearance of
the oppida. Hill-forts, traditionally an element of protohistoric settlement patterns,
seem to have been abandoned during the Early and Middle La Tene periods. The
population was scattered across the countryside, where the expansion of agriculture
ensured its wealth. It was not until the second century Be that settlements of 5 to 10
hectares - similar in size to the forts of the Midi - were created, in the middle of rich
agricultural areas, such as happened at Levroux (Indre) or Aulnat (Puy-de-Dome).
New activities such as craft industries and commerce appeared there and were
sufficiently important to have allowed some of the inhabitants to specialize in them.
Iron tools, good-quality pottery, and standardized jewellery produced in multiple
copies in complex moulds were made by professionals and sold, thanks to the
appearance of low-value coins which facilitated trade, to families whose domestic
production was rapidly withering.
Oppida develop in Gaul after the formation of these craft-and commerce-based
villages. The presence of spectacular defences intimates a military role for these
sites, of course, but this is not for us the essential element in the explanation of their
development. There is no doubt that oppida represent a return to the hill-fort
tradition. Such sites, since the Bronze Age, had acted as foci for the existence of
communities, possibly enhanced by being the settings for festivals and meetings;
they provided, too, for common defence. How else can one explain the placing of
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