GOURZON
Haute-Marne, France.
Gallo-Roman city on the Châtelet hill overlooking the valley of
the Marne between Fontaines and Bayard, and at the
intersection of two Roman roads. One of these followed
the Maine valley while the other, from Naix (Nasium),
led W. The city, ca. 20 ha in area, replaced a Celtic
oppidum (foundations of huts, pottery, fibulas, bracelets,
statuettes, and coins), which in turn had succeeded a
Neolithic settlement (about 100 axes of flint, quartz, and
jadeite, arrowheads, knives, cutters, and scraping tools).
The site has yielded a number of finds since the 18th c.,
but has never been systematically explored until the recent excavation of a suburban quarter. In the section
originally investigated, which today is covered with vegetation, a network of roads and squares was uncovered,
a temple, some baths, many houses (most of them with
cisterns and stone roofs), and part of an inhumation
necropolis. A number of reliefs and sculptures and some
architectural fragments have been found, a considerable
quantity of pottery (especially terra sigillata—Centre,
Alsace, Argonne), as well as arms, fibulas, jewelry, glassware, bronze and silver grave gifts, tesserae of bone and
ivory, and over 10,000 coins, including several hundred
gold pieces. The Gallo-Roman settlement apparently developed uninterruptedly from the 1st to the 5th c. A.D.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Grignon,
Bulletin des fouilles faites, par
ordre du roi, d'une ville romaine sur la montague du
Châtelet (1774); Phulpin, Notes archéologiques sur le
Châtelet (1840); R. Colson, Pro Alesia (1921) 161ff id.,
Bacth (1923) 20ff; (1927) 337, 343; id., Les amphores
du Châtelet (1930); P. Colson & id., Mém. Soc. des
Lettres, des Sciences, des Arts de Saint-Dizier 23 (1935);
G. Drioux, Cahiers Haut-Marnais 19-20 (1949) 160; Y.
Gaillet, ibid. 77 (1964) 49, 81; (1965) 90; P. Ballet,
La Haute-Maine antique (2d ed. 1971) 131-35, 144-49.
E. FRÉZOULS
