Mausolées et grands domaines ruraux à l'époque romaine dans le nord-est de la Gaule

“It is foolish for us to have well-appointed houses during our lifetime and yet to care nothing for the abodes we shall inhabit for a far longer time”. In Petronius’s Satyricon, such are the words spoken by Trimalcion when the whim takes him to give the guests he has gathered for a banquet a depiction of the mausoleum he intends to have erected as a homage to his own memory. Those words no doubt reflect the paramount importance given to their tombs by the people of antiquity.

Over the last few decades, colossal tombs of the Roman period have sparked renewed interest, fuelled by outstanding discoveries, in the Gaulish provinces in particular. This book aims to provide a synthetic outlook on those tombs while focusing on a hitherto disregarded aspect of the problem: the relationship of the sepulchres to their environment in rural areas. The book is the result of an international endeavour; as such, it provides regional overviews as well as information about a number of recently excavated and as yet unpublished edifices.