Revue Archéologique du Centre de la France (May 2009)
Parcellaires fossoyés du Haut Empire des plateaux de Brie : Jossigny/Serris et Moissy-Cramayel (Seine-et-Marne). Approche méthodologique de l'étude des réseaux
Abstract
Two rescue archaeology excavations, near the French villages of Jossigny/Serris and Moissy-Cramayel (Paris area, Seine-et-Marne), have revealed the presence of Gallo-Roman ditch networks covering tens of acres. Activity areas and/or habitation sites have also been detected. The bases of such reticulated systems were laid during the end of the Ist C. BC or the 1st half of the Ist C. AD. The occupied areas and the ditches were abandoned during the IIIrd C. AD. Those ditches, for the most part rectilinear and sometimes several hundred meters in length, could fulfill the triple function of drainage, land division and enclosure boundaries. Their morphologies along with their pedological and topographic contexts seem to imply a will to drain the surrounding soils, which may be linked to land cultivation. A methodology has been developed to study the orientation and positions of presupposed axes of linear features (ditches, walls, pathways...), leading to a hypothosis of contemporaneous “orthogonal” groupings. Statistical and comparative studies on the possible presence of distance and surface modules were also carried out. It appears that the surfaces of “orthogonal” delineated areas might have been determined on the basis of modules corresponding to or approaching units known from Antiquity. For both sites, those elements seem to represent strong indications as to the presence of an agricultural drainage and land dividing system, based at least partly on an orthogonal grid and fixed surface units.
