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• Introduction
• Visit
• Preface
• Content
  1. Environment
     1. The geological context
     2. The Aisne valley
     3. Flora
     4. Fauna
     5. The first settlements
  2. The Gallic village
     1. The story of a Remi village
     2. The birth of the village
        1. A summertime settlement
     3. Establishing the village
     4. Village life
  3. Daily life
     1. Agriculture and subsistence
     2. Men and animals
     3. Fishing
     4. Meat in the diet
     5. The table and crockery
     6. Craftsmanship
     7. Trade
  4. The Necropolises
     1. Distribution of the necropolises
     2. Funerary rituals
     3. Funeral plots
     4. The funerary population
     5. Funerary buildings
     6. Food for the dead
     7. Tombs of the sacrificers?
     8. A hierarchy of tombs
  5. Sacred sites
     1. Large sacred sites
     2. The environs of the village in the 1^st century BC.
     3. Another Gallic village: Avançon
     4. Acy-Romance and Romanisation
  6. Archaeological research
     1. 20 years of archaeological research
     2. Methodology
     3. Archeozoology
     4. Experimental archaeology
     5. Acy-Romance seen from the air
     6. Reconstruction and archaeology
     7. Acy-Romance at the Museum of the Ardennes
• Appendices
  1. Resources
  2. Site map
  3. Chronology
  4. Accessibility policy
  5. Credits
• Versions
  1. Version française
  2. Version Flash

The birth of the village

In about 180 BC, a large group of humans settled on the chalk plain some forty metres above a bend in the Aisne, on its south bank. Economic criteria, control of the natural route of communication, vast pastures in the valley and the lighter arable soils on the plateau above were the basic reasons for this choice. The military camps established during the Second Empire (Sissonne, Aisne, Mourmelon and Suippes, Marne) certainly provided a good picture of the landscape in the second century BC: patches of light woodland and large areas of grassland dotted with clumps of thorny scrub, the "savart champenois".

The new arrivals could not fail to notice the large burial mounds on the first terrace of the plateau, some circular and others rectilinear, dating from the final Bronze Age. Up on the plateau itself, a tumulus surrounded by a circular ditch some twenty metres in diameter rose remarkably high above the ground. Its grandiose intent was clear since it was visible for several kilometres to the north and east. This mound was to play an essential role, since it was later assimilated into a hero's tomb used for ancestor cult worship – the Greek heroon – and served as a reference point for the ground layout of the village.

Welcome in the virtual visit of gallic village of Acy-Romance (France)

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