La présentation, commentée et illustrée, d'un lot de 46 lampes grecques ou de type grec, concerne des productions majoritairement du Ve s. av. J.-C. Les importations attiques représentent les deux tiers des exemplaires de ce siècle et plus de la moitié de ceux du IVe s. Ce lot, relativement important pour le Midi de la France, amène l'auteur à présenter un inventaire des exemplaires contemporains connus dans le Sud de la France, dans le Levant espagnol, en Italie jusqu'à la Sicile, et au-delà vers le monde punique, en Afrique du Nord. Le développement circum- méditerranéen de l'usage de la lampe à partir du début du Ve s. suppose de disposer d'huile à brûler. Mais présence des lampes et apparition de l'oléiculture ne sont pas forcément parallèles ! D'autres caractères, plus culturels qu'économiques, doivent intervenir.
The supervision of the diggings prior to the construction of a car park on "place de la Madeleine" in Béziers in 1986, allowed the excavation of a very interesting pottery-kiln of the 5th century B.C. situated near the area excavated in 1985. This is a basic discovery for the protohistory research : it is the most ancient pottery-kiln of a Greek type found on the western coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Moreover, its exceptional preservation state is quite unique and made possible to study its construction techniques and its working. Its homogeneous filling up allows to date it in the 5th century B.C. and gives evidence of a local production of grey-monochrome pottery which will henceforth be termed "biterroise", as well as of a production of turned kitchen pottery.
So, the pottery-kiln of Béziers raises again, though on a more concrete basis, the problem of locally produced turned table and kitchen pottery that copies similar products of Greek workmanship. Furthermore, this discovery throws a new light on the issue of contacts between the Greeks and the natives.
Excavations carried out in the centre of Béziers in recent years allowed the archaeological exploration of the levels Vth and IVth c. B. C. In this paper the authors present a collection of objects from a thick preparatory core for a road, representative of the last three quarters of the Vth c. The complete analysis of the collected objects, mainly pottery and metal objects, plus some fauna, is very detailed and abundantly illustrated. In addition, regional and Mediterranean comparisons bring the authors to stress the distinctives features of this large protohistoric agglomeration in the context of Southern France (concerning town-planning and private architecture, only touched upon here, but mainly table and kitchen crockery). Precise counts of almost 9 000 fragments provide a new reference basis for the Languedoc, but also for the far-west Mediterranean.
The extent of the Mediterranean factors, the specificities noted and the remarkable scarcity of local indigenous features induce the authors to stress the particular relations of this habitat with the Western Greek world and its strongly Hellenised character and to consider the presence of Phocaeans.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.