Evolution Of A Town

The beginnings of a Roman settlement in southern Gaul

- Marley Brown

Working in advance of construction on a high school dormitory in the town of Uzès in southern France, archaeologists have discovered, at the town’s periphery, the remains of an early Roman settlement named Ucetia dating to the first century B.C.. Researchers have found evidence there of both Celtic and Roman dwellings. Located in an arid region close to the Mediterranean, Ucetia was previously only known from an inscription on a stela in the nearby city of Nîmes.

Today, visitors flock to the famed market villages of Le Gard, a district within southern France’s Occitanie region. Uzès is one of them. Until 2017, however, the location of Ucetia, which gave Uzès its name, remained an enigma. The town was thought to perhaps have been destroyed or obscured by later building throughout the centuries. In an excavation that covers several acres, archaeologists from the French National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), have now identified Ucetia just north of and outside Uzès’ medieval walls. They have unearthed an urban footprint that dates back to before the Roman invasion of Gaul in the first century B.C.. and extends into the early Middle Ages. The site’s fortuitous location outside the main walls of the modern town is giving scholars an opportunity to trace the early phases of Roman urbanization in the region, at a slight remove from the town’s later development.