Les Pyrénées romaines, la frontière, la ville et la montagne

Abstract

This article draws from recent publications dealing with the Roman Pyrenees (the Panissars trophy, microregional studies carried out by the ICAC) in order to discuss the thematics of the natural border and the incompatibility of town and mountain. Landscape archeology enables one to observe the diversity of the romanisation of the Pyrenean valleys. The location of the limits between the three Roman provinces of Aquitania, Gallia Narbonensis and Tarraconensis has been interpreted as the constitution of the massif into an inner border of the Empire. As a matter of fact, that location is a historical accident devoid of economic and social legitimacy. This assessment vindicates a return to the distinction between limit and border. Using the concept of border in a spatial sense is confusing. It must be substituted by the concept of margin. The same assessment vindicates the distinction between a definition of the territory in naturalistic terms and one in natural terms. The confrontation of those two definitions explains the specificity of the mountainside town and justifies the rebuttal of the idea that the mountain is exclusive of the town. A critical approach sets into relief the identitarian dimension of those thematics of exclusion.

Keywords

• landscape archeology
• historical geography
• Pyrenees
• Rome
• border
• opposition mountain/plain