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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Vix: The Temptation of the City

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International audience; Ancient and modern geographers tend to use three criteria to define cities: a population above 5,000 inhabitants, the presence of a variety of activities, and a network connecting them with other establishments. Plato, Herodotus, Pausanias, and many others had preceded them in attempting to establish a paradigm for the city or polis. The Celtic princely seat on Vix-Mont Lassois is considered a coherent and organised entity, consisting of a quasi-urban space. At Vix, the latest investigations (2016‑2019) have revealed remains that suggest the possibility of harbour installations on the banks of the Seine. The notion of urbanisation or proto-urbanisation has been put forward to describe the princely phenomenon that developed northwest of the Alps between the 7th and mid-5th century BC. Such an attempt at urban life remained incomplete, and we (the author and Patrice Brun) have defined it as an atelo-urban phenomenon. The reasons for its failure are still poorly understood but are likely to have been of a systemic nature affecting the whole of Europe.