Abstract
p. 278-279
Texte intégral
1 Introduction
2The district known as the " Benedictins" is east of the jardin de la Fontaine on the lower south-eastern slope of mount Cavalier. Four rescue excavations (total surface about 4,000 m2), undertaken between 1966 and 1992, are presented in this volume. In addition, there is information garnered from watching briefs and chance discoveries in the district. During the protohistoric period, the area studied is on the edge of the pre-roman oppidum. However, after construction of the Augustan period city-wall, it is in the centre of the town, very near to civic and religious buildings. From the end of the second century AD the Bénédictins area is largely abandoned. It is outwith the new city wall, whose construction is begun in 1194, and not until the eighteenth century is it enclosed anew, when the Royal Engineer P. Mareschal re-organises the layout of the town.
3 1 Geology and first settlement
4Archaeological features are to be found on all soil types encountered in this area. Essentially, the subsoil of the slope comprises several superimposed formations directly under the human activity. The subsoil encountered by neolithic farmers is a heterogeneous mosaic. The study and the reconstitution of the late prehistoric countryside shows a certain ressemblance to the modern garrigues The earliest human activity on the slopes dates from the Neolithic period. The fragile balance of the ecosytem is disturbed before there is permanent occupation at the beginning of the Iron Age. Human occupation of the Bénédictins from the end of the sixth century BC follows a rhythm of management of space where habitat and agriculture are entwined. The construction of a city wall in the fourth century BC completes a period of expansion and organisation of the town on the plain. Thereafter the Bénédictins is intra muros, though there are no buildings, only terrassed fields, between the end of the fifth century and the middle of the second century BC. At this time the habitat is at the foothills and on the plain. The pre-Roman town was therefore a lowland grouped habitat, which is unique in the region. New building on the slopes from the second century BC indicates a renewed interest for the slopes near the plain, to the disadvantage of the formerly cultivated areas.
5 2 Discoveries from the Roman period
6Each of these four mojor archaeological excavations is fully publshed. The house known as La Marseillaise (dug in 1966) which has an irregular plan and contains some simple mosaics, is an interesting example of an early Empire Nimes house built to a classic plan and adapted to the sloping terrain. At the Villégiales des Bénédictins (excavated in 1992), several impressive houses, some with gardens, are inserted into the slope. The water and drainage systems are notably complex. The group of the Hesperides (dug in 1986) is without doubt the most original. Houses marked by protohistoric building techniques and fashions are to be found the length of two perpendicular streets. The Fontaine des Bénédictins dig (1982), has brought to light the richest buildings and finds in the district (complex mosaics, paintings...) This chapter concludes with some particularly interesting finds reports on coins, pottery groups and small finds.
7 3 The Houses
8Taken as a whole the civil architecture of the Bénédictins district is analysed on two levels. Firstly, the major constructions are characterised by the material used and the construction details, secondly, traditional sources, evolution and borrowings are disentangled from the Roman architecture. The pavements reveal social status and artistic ambition. Their study provides corroboration as well as begging some questions about the history of mosaics in Roman Gaul. Detailed study of the wall decoration shows a relationship to work observed in Nimes and in the Narbonne region, which is to say the influence of the 4th style from the middle of the first century AD as well as the imitation marble fashion of the beginning of the second century AD. The town has an important place in the agricultural economy because of the presence of market-gardens, vineyards and urban orchards, indeed one of the houses excavated had a domestic garden. All the sculptures uncovered are in local limestone and are small except for a statue whose portable head seems likely to represent Antonia Minor. The corpus of inscriptions comprises three girdles of Hermes and examples of domestic ritual addressed to the Genius of the master or the luno of the mistress. So far as the luxury and elaboration of the houses is concerned, social hierarchy is reflected in the organisation on the slope, the altimetric levels and the public waterworks. The phenomenon of differential reaction to urban centres is also a factor.
9 4 A district of the Roman town
10The urbanisation of the south-eastern slope of mount Cavalier is later than that of the southern slope or the plain, already occupied at the beginning of the Christian era. The rhythm increases no doubt because moderate urban pressure. The general impression is that of an attempt at a planned town handicapped by the topography and probably by the existence of previous occupations. The importante of water in the creation and development of urban centres around the mediterranean basin is well known. Nimes is not an exception. Apart from water-courses and wells, the emphasis is on two measures hitherto little studied in Nimes, soil drainage of the slopes and the organisation of a major part of the water distribution system. The installation of a pipe near the end of the second quarter of the first century AD bringing water from Uzès, was advantageous to buildings under the datum level of the castellum, dearly influencing later urban organisation.
11 5 From late antiquity until the present day
12Human occupation which began at the end of the second century BC is difficult to reconstitute. It comprised farming and gardening or, more likely, untended land given occasional attention. There is only occasional and late evidente for the systematic planting of urban waste ground whith intreases in area from the end of the fourth tentury. From the Middle-Ages until about 1680, the district, almost untouthed by town development, keeps its rural tharatter, though there is evidente for the operation of lime-kilns. The presente of houses remains the exception until the end of the seventeeth century. The district is largely untouthed by the urban development caused by the construction of both de Rohan’s defensive wall and the nearby citadel. Until the mid-nineteenth century, buildings are principally on the edge of roads, and even then their presente is not systematit, gardens being the dominant feature.
13 Conclusion
14From the early Roman Empire the district is distinct from its neighbours, particularly to the south and the west where it is adjacent to the central monumental buildings. Here, the presente of houses defines the structure of the town, even though there is a clear variation in the quality of the buildings and the social status of their inhabitants. This book aims to contribute to a renewal of interest in the urban house which is too rarely studied. In this volunte the development of urban history is studied over a long period, from late prehistory to modern times.
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