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Reims/Durocortorum, Cité Des Rèmes: Les Principales Étapes De La Reims/Durocortorum, cité des Rèmes : les principales étapes de la formation urbaine Robert Neiss, François Berthelot, Jean-Marc Doyen, Philippe Rolet To cite this version: Robert Neiss, François Berthelot, Jean-Marc Doyen, Philippe Rolet. Reims/Durocortorum, cité des Rèmes : les principales étapes de la formation urbaine. Gallia - Archéologie des Gaules, CNRS Édi- tions, 2015, Dossier : La naissance des capitales de cités en Gaule Chevelue, 72 (1), pp.161-176. 10.4000/gallia.1485. hal-01924956 HAL Id: hal-01924956 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01924956 Submitted on 14 Jan 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial - NoDerivatives| 4.0 International License Reims/Durocortorum, cité des Rèmes Les principales étapes de la formation urbaine Robert NEISS, François BERTHELOT, Jean-Marc DOYEN et Philippe ROLLET Mots-clés. Cité fédérée, chef-lieu de cité, capitale de province, Keywords. Federated city, chief-town, provincial capital, sanctuaire protohistorique, oppidum, projet urbain, enceinte protohistoric sanctuary, oppidum, urban project, Augustan city augustéenne, forum, carroyage urbain, autel aux princes de la wall, forum, urban grid, altar to the Youth Princes, currency jeunesse, émissions monétaires. issues. Résumé. Longtemps Reims n’était entré dans l’histoire qu’avec César et Abstract. For a long time, Reims’ history only began with Caesar la guerre des Gaules. Il est vrai que, malgré une mythologie ancienne and the Gallic Wars. Despite an ancient mythology claiming an revendiquant une origine au moins aussi lointaine que celle de Rome, origin as ancient as Rome’s, previous archaeological pieces of les témoignages archéologiques antérieurs étaient peu consistants evidence weren’t reliable and were mainly ignored. Preventive mais surtout ignorés. L’archéologie préventive a progressivement archaeology gradually gathered data attesting to a settlement accumulé des données attestant une occupation pouvant remonter founded at least around the 2nd c. BC. The inventory of old finds au moins au IIe s. av. J.-C. Le recensement des découvertes anciennes even allows us to speculate on an earlier origin and to make out permet même d’imaginer des origines plus lointaines et de distinguer an evolution through large successive stages, resulting in the une évolution par grandes étapes successives qui ont abouti à la ville Augustan city and showing themselves in tangible changes in augustéenne et qui se matérialisent dans des interventions concrètes the city shape. Documents dating back to La Tene match the sur la forme urbaine. Des documents remontant à La Tène ancienne birth of Reims site to the organization of Remi’s territory. A vast associent la naissance du site de Reims à celui de l’organisation space of an unknown function developed very early under the du territoire des Rèmes. Un vaste espace, voué à une fonction aegis of a sanctuary overlooking the site. Then, in the 2nd c. BC., indéfinie, a pu se développer très tôt sous l’égide d’un sanctuaire settlements multiplied in the centre of the basin shaping the siting surplombant le site. Au IIe s. av. J.-C., les occupations se multiplient of the future town. Shortly before the Conquest, an oppidum au centre de la cuvette formant l’assiette de la future ville. Vers la fin precisely delineated the settlement’s boundaries, and the latter de l’Indépendance, un oppidum circonscrit précisément les limites de quickly grew later on. Then, the rise of the town to the position l’agglomération qui connut un rapide développement au lendemain of provincial capital coincided with an ambitious new founding de la Conquête. Puis l’accession de la ville au statut de capitale de initiative which created an urban area of 500 ha, surrounded by a province coïncide avec une entreprise de refondation ambitieuse gigantic city wall of which the layout seems to recall the ancient qui dessine une agglomération d’environ 500 ha, entourée d’une founding of the site and shows a remarkable continuity in the land enceinte gigantesque dont le tracé semble rappeler l’ancienneté de settling and in the general plan. la fondation du site, et illustre, par la même occasion, une continuité Translation : Cécile TUARZE remarquable de l’implantation foncière et des tracés directeurs. La recherche des origines d’un peuple, d’une cité ou d’une est située à la fin du vie s., repris par Flodoard, suggèrent que ville est une très ancienne quête dont nous pouvons retrouver la revendication de l’origine commune de Reims et de Rome quelques témoignages à Reims dès l’Antiquité. Au xe s., Flodoard remonterait à l’Antiquité, lorsque l’on représenta sur la porte de l’exprime explicitement en précisant que la tradition lui est bien Mars, ce monument emblématique de Reims, les deux jumeaux antérieure (Histoire de l’Église de Reims, I, 1 ; Sot, 1993, allaités par la louve. Cette écriture de l’histoire est restée vivace p. 357-364). Selon cette tradition, la naissance de Reims serait jusqu’à la veille de l’époque moderne ; elle se fonde peut-être intimement liée à Rome, non pas à l’occasion de la conquête sur la réinterprétation, éventuellement déjà d’époque impériale, césarienne, mais dès les origines puisqu’elle serait contempo- de la monnaie rème aux trois bustes, très fréquente à Reims, raine de la fondation même de Rome, lorsque Remus, le frère dont le revers plagie les deniers républicains et où la légende de Romulus – ou certains de ses compagnons survivants –, ROMA est remplacée par REMO. Le phénomène de création aurait donné son nom à la cité dans laquelle il se serait réfugié. de mythes fondateurs de villes à partir de la réinterprétation 161-176 p. 2015, , 72-1, Les Actes des saints Sixte et Sinice, dont la date de rédaction d’images monétaires est connu dans l’Antiquité. Gallia 161 09_REIMS.indd 161 12/11/15 14:33 ROBERT NEISS ET AL. On a par la suite imaginé d’autres possibilités, plus lointaines LES ORIGINES et plus inventives encore, à la faveur du développement des études bibliques et de l’intérêt pour les langues orientales. Le peuple- ment du monde ayant commencé après le déluge, la descendance ÉTAT DES SOURCES ARCHÉOLOGIQUES de Noé, par la lignée du premier fils, Japhet, aurait été à l’origine des rois des Gaules et en particulier du vingt-troisième, Namnès, Le xixe s., et plus précisément sa seconde moitié, a vu se père du fondateur de la ville, un certain Remus, distinct toutefois développer l’intérêt archéologique pour les Gaulois avec le du frère de Romulus. On trouve des parallèles dans bien d’autres début des recherches sur le terrain. En 1846, Narcisse Brunette, villes. Ainsi le roi Lugdus aurait-il fondé Lyon et Paris, la ville architecte de la ville, a mis à profit ses observations faites à du même nom. l’occasion des travaux qu’il a menés à Reims pour dessiner un Au début du xviie s., Nicolas Bergier (1635), le plus ancien plan de la ville antique où apparaissent les premiers éléments archéologue rémois, malgré sa pratique de terrain, n’a pas attribués à l’époque gauloise, en l’occurrence un fossé d’en- échappé à ces élucubrations d’érudits découvrant, avec une ceinte (Brunette, 1846). Les relations de ces découvertes, faites certaine ingénuité, l’immense champ de la recherche historique à partir de 1842, se réduisent à quelques lignes peu détail- ancienne. Il est, sur ce plan, suivi par ses contemporains, Jean lées (Brunette, 1861, p. 2 et 1885, p. 6). Quelques décennies Rogier et Pierre Coquault tout comme Dom Guillaume Marlot plus tard, Henri Demitra, agent voyer de la ville, eut à son (1843-1846, I, p. 88-93). tour la perspicacité de profiter des divers travaux de voirie À la fin du xviiie s. et surtout au xixe s., cette mythologie est effectués en ville pour enrichir les connaissances sur cette oubliée au profit d’une nouvelle construction de l’histoire, centrée même époque. Son plan de la ville et sa publication de 1910 cette fois sur les origines césariennes de la ville. La question (Demitra, 1910), rassemblent l’essentiel des informations dont des antécédents gaulois est sous-jacente, explorée surtout par on disposait avant les récentes fouilles préventives du dernier les archéologues locaux de l’époque, mais reste étrangère aux tiers du xxe s. Les spéculations mythiques et mythologiques principales préoccupations des recherches classiques qui se déve- sont délaissées par ces hommes de terrain qui s’intéressent loppent parallèlement. On imagine alors que l’agglomération de désormais aux objets, et plus particulièrement aux monnaies Reims n’existe réellement qu’à partir de l’arrivée des Romains. dont la plupart proviennent alors de dépôts funéraires. C’est Cette thèse est toujours répandue parmi les historiens classiques ainsi que H. Demitra nous informe de la mise au jour de nom- et même parmi les protohistoriens. La difficulté de faire émerger breuses tombes gauloises regroupées dans les seuls ensembles des données archéologiques sur le territoire propre de la ville funéraires connus pour la période de l’Indépendance. Bien explique ce scepticisme récurrent. Il est en effet peu commode de que la description circonstanciée des découvertes fasse défaut, s’aventurer sur des terrains où les documents littéraires ou épigra- la seule mention d’armes et de torques suffit à authentifier la phiques sont rares, voire inexistants, et où souvent les documents datation gauloise ancienne de ces nécropoles.
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