Ports, routes et trafics en Occident: le cas de Narbonne

The exploration of this subject is based principally on epigraphic evidence, as illustrated in Hatzfeld’s ground-breaking work of 1919, to which may now be added the epigraphy of production and commerce, which goes hand in hand with trade and to which it owes its existence. The case studied here deals with the most westerly part of the Mediterranean, providing access to the continent through the network of routes from the areas around the Aquitaine isthmus and the Rhône isthmus as far as the Rhine and Garonne basins and out to the Atlantic Ocean. It looks at dynamic trends, phenomena which vary over time, just as contexts and economic circumstances may vary. These trends are integrated within the space formed by the routes created and used by people. The study deals with the commercial activities related to the production, transportation and consumption of goods, as well as the networks and directions of trade routes. Ports are important points of passage, places where goods are transferred, stored and distributed, as well as being the principal or secondary places of business

Warehouse Societies

International audienceWhen we are trying to imagine what the world of the warehouse was like in the last few centuries of the Republic and the first three of the Empire, we have to consider a particular type of storehouse and economic context at a time when commercial exchanges in the ports in which goods were stocked and redistributed reached their apogee. This was a time when ports were centres of constant activity in which goods were stored and redistributed and commercial exchange was at its height