Glanum (Saint Rémy-de-Provence, Bouches du Rhône)
The site to be found on the northern flank of the Alpilles has been settled since the Bronze Age[1]. Starting in the 4th century, an indigenous township spilled out of the Vallon Notre-Dame. At first it took over the mountainsides before largely spreading over the piedmont at the end of the Iron Age. At that point a defence wall protected some 50 acres of dell and surrounding hills. The site's raison d'être lies with the capture of run-off water in the Vallon Notre-Dame. The excavations point to the separation, as early as the first Iron Age, between the spring site closed off by the monumental gateway of the « porte charretière »
and the rest of the township. Around 100 BC, a second defensive wall doubled the size of the site to the north. In the 2nd century BC, Glanum enjoyed urban development including imposing public buildings on Hellenistic lines but from which indigenous culture was not totally banned. The town was destroyed during the campaigns of Roman conquest on Salyen territory[2] (125-22 and 90 BC). It boasts two distinct sectors:
The
« spring »
area, dedicated to a civic cult[3]. Situated in the area of the Vallon Notre-Dame, it is the original nucleus of the settlement. Even within the precinct of the Iron Age township, access to this space was protected by a fortification wall that secured the dell. Only during the 2nd century would the zone be endowed with architectural developments including a nympheum[4]. There must have been a cult honouring Glanis (proto-Cletic *glano- “clean” or “clear”), patron deity of the town. An altar in soft limestone inscribed in Gallo-Greek and honouring the Matres Glanicae[5] has also been recovered dating back to the 1st century BC. Later developments in the Roman era further confirm the religious role of this site: altars to the Matres Glanicae and to Hercules[6] have been unearthed. This water sanctuary area had its part in Glanum's urbanisation: starting in the 2nd century it would grow a second hub.The public buildings centre: Before it was built in the 2nd century BC, the monumental
« porte charretière »
was a demarcation. It is a fortified gateway, its foundation and the walls cladding (from the 4th to the 2nd century BC) re-use many smooth stelae with zoomorphic or anthropomorphic decorations and the remnants of painted pillars. The practice of exhibiting human skulls was perpetuated in the 2nd century in a different way. Human skulls nailed for display were found at the level of the internal portico of a vast trapezoidal building understood to be the prytaneion[7]. Furthermore Glanum's seated warriors have uniquely been conserved in their original setting. Their installation between a defence wall and a tiered seating building fits in, at the turn of the 2nd to 1st century BC with a warrior-hero cult, wherein it is to be understood as a heroon[8]. These figures were probably endowed with a politico-mythological dimension relating to the town's public life. They are placed hard by the tiered seating construction known as bouleuterion[9]. Thus the diverse rituals were taking place within a setting of civic architecture including a prytaneion, a bouleiterion with tiered-seating, a heroon, not forgetting the Tuscan order temple on its podium also built in the 2nd century.
In the 2nd/1st centuries Glanum thus boasted a dual identity bound in cult site connected to a spring and its monuments, and a politico-religious centre set outside the walls. Poleis Massalias[10] that it was Glanum no less preserved its indigenous culture when it came to cult practices (exhibition of skulls in the porticoes, statues of hero-warriors) while developing a significant civic architecture.
