Les dernières recherches à Vix (Côte-d’Or) (2016-2019) ont révélé des indices d’aménagements laissant supposer la présence d’installations portuaires en bordure de Seine. Il s’agirait là du premier témoignage de ce type en Europe pour la fin du premier âge du Fer. Une telle découverte focalise, à nouveau, l’attention sur la synergie qui existait entre les sites princiers en hauteur et les rivières qui coulaient en contrebas. Cette problématique nous incite aussi à discuter le concept de port of trade et à contester son application au cas des principautés celtiques de la fin du Hallstatt, période où le système princier a atteint son acmé.
The latest investigations at Vix (Côte-d’Or) (2016–2019) have revealed evidence of possible port facilities on the banks of the Seine, which would be the first instance of such an infrastructure for the end of the Early Iron Age. This discovery once again draws attention to the synergy that existed between the Hallstatt princely seats and the rivers on which they were often located. Current indications appear to suggest that a channel, starting at rampart 11 at the foot of the north-eastern flank of Mont Lassois, was joined to the Seine river, which was some 30 m distant at this point. Moreover, geophysical surveys carried out by the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) suggest that the defensive system was extended towards the right bank of the Seine river, to enclose a section of the river several hundred metres long and that it included a palisade enclosure, in whose centre a magnetometric survey revealed a large apsidal building which may be characteristic of a princely seat. Its location is unusual, compared to the buildings of the same type found on the summit of the plateau of Mont Lassois. The size of the newly discovered “palace” is impressive (32.5 m long and 18 m wide) and its dimensions are similar to those of the building on the summit of Mont Lassois called the “palace of the Lady of Vix”. In the early 1990s, Ludwig Pauli proposed that the Celtic princely seats were located in central places within long-distance trade networks, at locations where goods could be transferred. His hypothesis was based on pragmatic and functional observations. However, to suggest that this alone would explain the princely seat phenomenon at the end of the Early Iron Age was risky, not much more than a guess, and further proof is required to substantiate it. Even though Pauli’s theory has its weak points, it incites us to discuss the concept of port of trade, as defined by Polanyi, and to question Luc Baray’s application of this notion to the Celtic princely seats of the Late Hallstatt period, a time when the princely system was at its apogee. Polanyi does not analyse into the differences that operate or should operate between Karl Lehmann-Hartleben’s emporion and his own concept. In the end, the more one compares the two notions, the more the specific differences that are supposed to separate them become tenuous, the only remaining difference being the gap between autonomy (for emporia) and neutrality (for ports of trade). The emporia and ports of trade both have their own internal contradictions, which, depending on how they are interpreted, bring the two definitions closer to each other or pull them further apart. In the case of Vix, it is possible to advance, as a research hypothesis, that a harbour on the Seine river once existed there. There are indeed certain clues pointing in this direction, but they are as yet too incomplete to conclusively support this hypothesis. The fact that the port of trade model has lasted so long and has given rise to a plethora of articles shows that this concept has a high heuristic value and evidently owes its success to its problem-solving quality.
