The Rural Archaeology of Roman Gaul

Abstract

For obvious reasons, any question concerning the rural archaeology of the Roman West is likely to begin and end in France, and the necessity of taking the French evidence on any given topic into account is something of which non-French historians and archaeologists do not need to be reminded. The fact that such evidence is so often unsatisfactory and incomplete is frequently ascribed to inferior excavation techniques or methods of presentation, but although this is all too often the case a large part of the trouble seems to stem from the lack of proper co-ordination with regard to problems and programmes of study. It happens to be a fact that French archaeologists, in this particular field, are not always interested in the same topics, and are consequently not asking the same questions as their English counterparts. The questions and interests that lie at the back of the excavator's mind as he works are bound to colour the content and composition of his final report, and, unless these questions and interests are brought into the open and written down, the value of the material he provides is bound to be limited. Consequently, any publication which, however slightly, sets out the principles and aims of French rural archaeology is to be welcomed.