ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

PART III ROMAN TOWNS IN ITALY AND THE WEST
Urbanization in the Three Gauls: some observations J F Drinkwater
In this paper I intend to examine certain aspects of the
urbanization of the Augustan provinces of Aquitania,
Lugdunensis, and Belgica in the period from the Caesarian
conquest to the establishment of the Gallic Empire in
the 3rd century AD (Fig 38). I deliberately exclude
consideration of Narbonensis under the High Empire and
of Gaul as a whole under the later Empire, both for
economy of print and because I feel that the development
of northern Gaul under the Principate requires separate
and particular attention.
The paper is divided into four sections. In the first I will
briefly review present thinking on Gallo-Roman urbanization
in general. Special reference will be made to pre-
Roman antecedents and to the emergence of the civitas
capitals, their function, and their appearance. The second
section is devoted to a close investigation of two aspects of
Gallo-Roman civitas capitals, namely their defences and
their chronology. The third section examines the significance
of orthogonal street planning; and the fourth
attempts to carry discussion beyond the major urban
centres to the vici and the sanctuaries.
Urbanization in the Three Gauls
Students of Roman Britain are sometimes compelled to
supplement the rather meagre information for this island
with the much richer literary, epigraphical, and
archaeological material to be found across the Channel.
However, at the outset it is probably fair to concede that
they should be little surprised by, and will have little to
learn from, the present state of the evidence, and its
interpretation, for the urbanization of the Three Gauls.
Recent years have seen the publication of useful monographs
on important sites and an invaluable synthesis of
modern thinking on the earliest history of the French
town (Duval 1961; Etienne 1962; Février et al 1980), but
in terms of archaeological technique and historical analysis
the Three Gauls are still catching up with advances
already made in, or stimulated by, Romano-British
studies. Above all, perhaps, Gaul has suffered from the
lack of a Gallic Silchester to provoke thought by showing
us how a Comatan civitas capital may have looked and
operated in its entirety.
Common opinion now seems to advocate that in respect
of urbanization the Three Gauls experienced a combination
of continuity and sharp change. In the pre-Roman
period we can see clear signs of ‘embryonic’ urbanization
in the form of permanent centres of quite intense human
activity, the main functions of which were not primarily
agricultural or military, but religious, administrative, and
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even industrial (Février et al 1980, 204-6, 217-21, 231;
Drinkwater 1983, 11-12). These were the social and
economic foci of their regions; they brought together
various chains of production and processing which ran to
them from scattered farmsteads and from smaller artisanal
and commercial settlements in the vicinity; in short, the
hierarchy of aedificium, vicus, and oppidum. Individual
oppida, through their dominance of the main lines of
communication, were in close contact with each other and
with the wider political and economic world beyond Gaul.
Such a state of affairs existed, at least among the larger and
more advanced nations of central Gaul, from about the
end of the 2nd century BC (Nash 1976, 128; Février et al
1980, 86, 204). This was the tradition upon which Rome
could build.
But with integration into the Roman Empire the
indigenous movement towards urbanization was accelerated
at such speed, and under such different political and
social circumstances, that the evolutionary incline was
faulted: there was a shearing, a forcing upwards to such a
degree as to result in discontinuity. This was due to the
interaction of two major forces. The first was the imposition
of an overall military strategy on the Three Gauls,
directed ultimately to the holding of the Rhenish frontier.
This entailed the complete recasting of the road system,
and the building of forts to protect its most vulnerable
parts. Such activity was bound to disrupt the local,
oppida- based, hierarchies. As was later to occur in Britain,
oppida could now find themselves inconveniently distant
from new patterns of movement created by the military
highways; or, even if they were near or on these highways,
they could suffer competition from rival centres of activity
stimulated or brought into existence by them, and better
able to exploit the new circumstances (Drinkwater 1983,
121-3; cf Frere 1975, 4-6; 1978, 273; Rivet 1975,
111-12). These included existing vici and more recent
settlements around forts or other stopping-places, both
official (stations of the Public Post) and unofficial (inns).
The old order was shaken up; and, indeed, I would argue
that with the consequent loosening of the hold of the
oppida the number of potential urban centres was actually
increased.
The second force ran counter to the first and arose out of
Roman willingness to see, and indeed to insist on, the
elevation of a very limited number of such places to
provide for the proper running of Gaul. By these I mean
neither the colonies nor the provincial capitals, both of
which (somewhat oddly) figure little in the picture of
Gallic urbanization, but rather the so-called civitas capitals,
in which was centralized the administration of each
Gallic nation. Thus, out of potentially many centres a few