Françoise DES BOSCS
2020-2021
François Chevalier fellow
Université de Pau et Pays de l'Adour
Ports, trade, and port companies in the Atlantic Arc during the Roman era
Françoise des Boscs is a holder of the Agrégation d'Histoire (1990). She was a member of Casa de Velázquez from 1993 to 1995 and defended a doctoral thesis in Roman History at the University of Bordeaux-Montaigne in 1996 on the integration of the Hispanic elite into the ruling circles of the Roman State at the end of the Republic and during the High Empire. She was recruited as a lecturer at the same university in 1997. She worked as a teacher-researcher at the University of Bordeaux until 2007, then at the University of Pau and the Pays de l'Adour, during which time she developed her research on Hispanic elites with a particular interest in the economic aspect and amphora material as a source for the study of family trajectories. She also developed a collective research programme, funded by the National Research Agency (ANR), on the Strait of Gibraltar in ancient and medieval times. Within this programme, she has led one of the three research axes dealing with the representations and perceptions of the Strait, participated in the axis on "Circulations" and in the writing of a book for the general public on this region. It is this research that led her to reflect on the port issues that are the object of the research programme that will be carried out within the MIAS framework.
Projet de recherche
This project is part of a current issue concerning the study of exchange networks and traffic, of which ports are one of the main vectors. The objective is to reflect on the way in which Rome's control of the South Atlantic area, the organisation and development of the territories, also progressive, which accompanied it, have been able to modify both the development and the practice of this coastline, as well as the exchange networks of which it has been both the place and the vector. The reflection will be based firstly on the creation of a catalogue of the ports, of which there are around sixty, from Sala in Mauretania Tingitana to the mouth of the Loire, and on that of a corpus of merchants and foreigners encountered on its sites, based on epigraphic data. We will then reflect on a triple scale:
- On a local scale, to understand and present what the physiognomy of these ports and their internal organisation might have been like on the basis of the elements found.
- At the regional level, to better understand the link between the establishments of these ports, the river network, the organisation of the road network, and the resources and forms of development of the hinterland concerned. The idea here would be to establish a typology of port networks.
- Beyond that, to consider how these different networks were articulated among themselves and with the Mediterranean traffic towards Rome and Italy.
Sélection de publications
- Le détroit de Gibraltar (Antiquité-Moyen-Age) I. Représentations, perceptions, imaginaires, Etudes réunies par Françoise des Boscs, Yann Dejugnat et Arthur Haushalter, Collection de la Casa de Velázquez, n°174, Madrid, 2019.
- « Epigraphie des amphores de la Bétique et épigraphie lapidaire. L’apport d’une approche croisée à l’histoire socio-économique des élites : le dossier des Stertinii et des Ocratii de Volubilis », REA, 121, 2019, n°2, pp. 357-387.
- « Le système portuaire fluvio-lagunaire de la vallée du Bétis : réflexions sur son organisation et son évolution de la fin de la République à la fin du Haut-Empire », dans Les ports dans l’espace méditerranéen antique, Narbonne et les systèmes portuaires fluvio-lagunaires, Actes du colloque international Montpellier (22-23 mai 2014), textes réunis sous la direction de C. Sanchez et M.-P. Jézégou, Revue Archéologique de Narbonnaise, Supplément 44, Montpellier, 2016, p. 157-172.
- « L'apport de l'épigraphie à notre connaissance du « système portuaire » de la moyenne vallée du Baetis (Guadalquivir) sous le Haut-Empire », dans Epigrahia dei porti, Atti della XVIIème rencontre sur l'épigraphie du monde romain (Aquileia, 14-16 ottobre 2010), a cura di Claudio Zaccaria, Trieste, 2014, pp. 227-247.
- Un parti hispanique à Rome ? Ascension des élites hispaniques et pouvoir politique d'Auguste à Hadrien (27 av. J.-C.- 138 ap. J.-C.), Bibliothèque de la Casa de Velázquez, n° 32, Madrid, 2005, 763 pages.