Les demeures aristocratiques d'Aquitaine : société et culture de l'Antiquité tardive dans le Sud-Ouest de la Gaule

This book is the result of a study whose object is to collect all essential data on the large dwellings of Aquitania and the Toulouse region in late antiquity and to place them in their historical, social and economic context. The spectacular blossoming of the domestic architecture of the élite in this period is in effect a remarkable feature of these regions and is without parallel in other parts of Gaul.

This synthesis, the first on the subject, is based both on the literary sources and on the archaeological remains. All the new information revealed by the study or the reexamination of material connected with these dwellings has been taken into account. With the aid of abundant and fine-quality illustrations, the book also permits the reader to appreciate the originality of the decorations in mosaic carried out by the workshops of the South-West in the fourth and fifth centuries. It clearly demonstrates the existence of a school of mosaicists which was in this period unquestionably among the most dynamic and prestigious in Gaul.