Une éphémère tentative d’urbanisation en Europe centre-occidentale durant les VIe et Ve siècles av. J.‑C. ?
Authors: Brun Patrice , Chaume Bruno 
Published: February 2017

The idea that political hierarchy was reinforced within northern-Alpine societies of the 6th-5th centuries BC by contacts with the Greeks and the Etruscans has largely been challenged in the last 20 years by dominant trends in research. The new discoveries that have progressively been made in the field have definitively laid to rest this theory and its protagonists have converted and put forward new theories completely opposing the primitivism of postprocessualist thinking. The question of urbanisation in a region far from the Mediterranean and four centuries earlier than recently believed has been raised quite legitimately. We believe it should be seen in comparison to the form of urbanisation that developed in the ancient Greek and Etruscan city-states from the end of the 8th century BC and we will attempt to prove that a similar process was on the verge of succeeding further north but was aborted before its final completion. After reviewing the main ideas using a traditional approach, the principles of “ New Archaeology” and its virulent postmodernist reaction, utterly lacking in pertinence, we will underline the decisive advantages of using a new investigative scale in the field. It is largely due to this change in research methods that the aristocratic sites of Heuneburg, Vix and Bourges have overturned the primitivistic critics. We now have the means to examine whether it is justified to apply the concept of urbanism in the present case by reviewing what, in our eyes, is a fundamental question : the general definition of urbanism. We would like to recall the global context of urbanisation during the 1st millennium BC in Europe. Paradoxically, we find that the process of urbanisation is more difficult to understand in Greece and Italy than in the regions north of the Alps. From Bavaria to the Berry, it is of a more complex political nature than previously envisioned by Kimmig and the systemists. We will demonstrate in passing that the somewhat magical explanation of the presence of a Greek krater in the Vix tomb is not only unverifiable, but also improbable. Finally, the unlikely hypothesis that the so-called aristocratic or princely sites were without any hold on surrounding territory will also be examined. We will, on the contrary, insist on a more particularist, localist and relativist approach of evidence of a widespread continental economy and of the major political, economic and ideological role played by high-status centres. We will detail the different types of establishment, from the simple farmstead to the aristocratic residence, that have been brought to light thanks to progress made in preventive archaeology, thus highlighting the success of changing scale in the field and thus encouraging continued efforts. The question of urbanisation must of course be considered within a framework of increasing political complexity, specifically with the emergence of the state. It is also important, in this respect, to review the subject of the probable access of women to the highest ranking roles in society, a phenomenon that is mainly apparent in societies with a strong formal hierarchy. Other evidence of this high level of complexity is the appearance of inscriptions on locally produced pottery indicating an awareness by certain indigenous populations of the importance of this type of communication and the first signs of a budding urban state society. The fact that this process remained incomplete is demonstrated by its brutal interruption for two to three centuries, and the absence, near the princely residences, of the vast burial grounds that invariably developed around urban agglomerations. To conclude we will review the over-used term “ proto-urban” and propose the new term “ incompletely urbanised site”, or “ atelo-urban” (atélès meaning incomplete in Greek), as it is more precise and devoid of ambiguity.