New insights into Mediterranean Gallo-Roman farming: a closer look at archaeological wells in Southern France
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ORIGINAL PAPER
New insights into Mediterranean Gallo-Roman farming: a closer look at archaeological wells in Southern France Isabel Figueiral & Hervé Pomarèdes & Mona Court-Picon & Laurent Bouby & Christophe Tardy & Jean-Frédéric Terral
Received: 2 August 2013 / Accepted: 18 February 2014 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014
Abstract Archaeological wells have recently become a major source of palaeoenvironmental and palaeoeconomic information, thus, providing the background for past day-to-day material life. At the site of La Lesse–Espagnac (Hérault), combined evidence from archaeobotany, morphometry and palynology, from two wells, offers a coherent picture of the diversity of the local Gallo-Roman farming economy, whose development was fuelled by the proximity of a major urban centre (Colonia Urbs Julia Septimanorum Baeterra—present day Béziers). The ever present vine growing and wine making were complemented by other food crops such as fruit trees, vegetables, condiments and cereals. The dense network of farming establishments and the scale of their production could only aggravate the extent of anthropogenic impact on the local natural woodlands and would explain the very minor role of typical thermophilous trees in the pollen diagram. The overmultiplication of these farming establishments may explain why some of them apparently ran out of momentum and eventually failed
Keywords Gallo-Roman period . Southern France . Farming economy . Vegetation . Archaeobotany . Morphometry . Fruit–seeds . Wood–charcoal . Pollen I. Figueiral : H. Pomarèdes : C. Tardy INRAP Méditerranée, 3 rue de l’Acropole, Lot. Actipolis, 34420 Villeneuve-les-Béziers, France I. Figueiral (*) : L. Bouby : J.
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