Hallstatt urban Experience before the Celtic Oppida in Central and Eastern Gaul. Two Case-Studies: Bourges and Vix

Résumé En

Celtic oppida from Late La Tène period are often interpreted as the earliest towns in temperate Europe. But it seems clear that some of the open agglomerations built on plains in the third and second century BC, like the site of Aulnat, were also proto-urban settlements. These two types of large settlements, fortified on a hilltop or open, have in fact “ancestors”, often dated from the end of the first Iron Age and the end of the Late Bronze Age, like Bourges or Corent in central France. The aim of this article is to discuss the features and status of these sites which are older than celtic oppida, in central and eastern Gaul. Some of them are only the result of a concentration of rural settlements, or correspond to the development of an aristocratic house. But others, like Bourges, are clearly urban sites although they weren’t occupied for a long time. They show there were different waves and ways of experimentation during the earliest history of urbanisation.