29 - Domestic and Settlement Organisation in Iron Age Southern France

Summary

This chapter concerns domestic architecture and its occupants in Mediterranean France during the Iron Age. Houses provide crucial information about protohistoric households and society, as they constituted the focus of daily life and stood at the centre of economic, cultural and social activities. The earliest houses in southern Gaul coexisted with those built in wattle and daub. The appearance of new settlement-patterns, architectural forms and building techniques have often been interpreted as related to colonial encounters. Some evidence indicates a substantial continuity in the use of space from the Late Bronze Age onwards. During the early fifth-century BC in Arles, housing blocks have been brought to light in the Jardin d'Hiver area, where houses were made up of a large courtyard. Courtyards or more generally uncovered spaces constituted an important feature of domestic-life in southern Gaul from the early Iron Age onwards. The central courtyard houses differed from their protohistoric counterparts in both ground plan and conception of space.