Le portage entre la Saône et la Moselle dans l’Antiquité (ier-ive siècles)

Abstract

During the Roman Period, one can join the Rhenan limes through several routes from Lyon. These routes connect various large drainage basins together thanks to portages of which we do not always know the exact path. The purpose of this paper is to propose possible routes of transfer between the Saône and the Moselle basins. The method of inquiry involves two aspects. First, we have to determine the main terminal-points of navigation on the two rivers. Due to the lack of data in ancient texts, the sources used are recent works on the hydrology of the Saône and Moselle rivers, archaeological remains and modern texts. Second, we simulate routes between the proposed terminal-points: we can then distinguish two kinds of paths. On the one hand, there was a long portage, taking the Via Agrippa from Chalon-sur-Saône, on the other hand, there was a short portage departing much more upstream on the Saône river. The short portage could only be taken when environmental conditions allowed, whereas the long one was passable all year long. The modeling of the path of least cost between the various terminal-points sheds new light on the various possible options and the choices the transporters made during ancient times. It appears that the route of the portage depended not only on the topographical, river and climate constraints but also on the objectives of the journey and the commercial strategies of the merchants.

Keywords

• portage
• route
• trade
• navigation
• least cost path