Long-distance trade and the rural population of Northern Gaul

Abstract

There are good reasons to consider northern Gaul a peripheral area of the Roman Empire in late antiquity (300–450). Its landscape of villas had to a large extent disappeared, and its towns had shrunk to insignificance. The emperor in Trier upheld a façade of well-being for the town and its immediate hinterland, but that façade likewise crumbled when he departed. Toward the mid-fifth century, no one would have believed the prophecy that by the mid-eighth century, all of Gaul would be part of an empire with its center in this northern periphery. What happened? By the mid-sixth century, northern Gaul seems to have experienced astonishing economic development. This change can be deduced from the flourishing vici (rural centers) in the Meuse Valley as well as from the wealth present in rural communities. Their cemeteries, which are now known in the thousands, were filled with objects from regional workshops and workshops at the other end of the former Roman Empire and beyond. The rural population’s demand for nonlocal products must have developed very quickly due to changing ritual repertoires and demographic growth revealed in evidence for the colonization of many areas and the creation of many new cemeteries. While the big question regarding which agents were responsible for this economic growth and recovery has been discussed for a long time, the importance of the rural population’s demand in a quantitative sense has not been considered a critical factor. In this chapter, I suggest that it was indeed critical.