Sophie Krausz's book, a publication of her work submitted to the Université de Paris 1 Sorbonne in 2014 to qualify for managing research projects, considers a problem clearly noted in the introduction: ‘Comment les sociétés protohistoriques sont-elles parvenues à un niveau de complexité permettant l'apparition des formes étatiques ? Et par quels moyens l'archéologie peut-elle décrypter ces processus ?’ (‘How did protohistoric cultures achieve the levels of complexity that resulted in the appearance of stately structures? And how can archaeology help decipher such processes?’, p. 18, translation by author). To answer these critical questions, Krausz consulted an extensive quantity of documentary sources—including all available archaeological information collected since the nineteenth century—that concern the Centre-Val de Loire region (comprising the départments of Loiret, Eure-et-Loir, Loir-et-Cher, Indre, Cher, and Indre-et-Loire; a vast area of 39,151 km2), spanning more than 5000 years from the beginning of the Neolithic to the Roman conquest. This was a difficult challenge and required a high level of research into the documentation of some 8000 sites, mostly accessible within the Patriarche database of the Ministère de la Culture, numerous publications of varying quality and ranging from single artefacts to fully studied areas. The author's task is summarized with some humour by her mentor, Olivier Buschsenschutz, in his Preface, where he notes the scale of the undertaking ‘to achieve the improbable objective that she tasked herself with: to reconstruct the development of stately structures during protohistory, from the accounts of Julius Caesar and a few handfuls of flint and pottery’ (trans. by author).
The present work is thus multi-scalar and provides a reading across time and space from a substantial amount of data, through geographical, social, and ethnographic approaches—in effect strongly historical. Divided into four main chapters, the book allows the reader to move successively from the detailed geographical settings (Chapter 1, ‘La région Centre-Val de Loire : le choix d'un territoire d’étude’), to refined analyses of three micro-territories (Chapter 3, ‘Modèles d'occupation de longue durée : trois exemples de formation des territoires protohistoriques en région Centre’, including Fort-Harrouard, Sorel-Moussel, Eure-et-Loire; Sublaines, Indre-et-Loire; and Levroux/Châteauroux, Indre), via a concise review of the archaeological data in the study area (Chapter 2, ‘La genèse des territoires protohistoriques dans le bassin de la Loire moyenne’, supported by a large amount of mapping, although the maps are too small). It concludes with an ambitious chapter challenging the archaeological and historical sources with anthropological models (Chapter 4, ‘Vers la naissance de l'Etat’).
These two chapters (2 and 4) are at the core of the detailed ideas supported in the thesis of Sophie Krausz. The analysis in Chapter 3—to which Chapter 2 is partly an introduction before the author focuses on the specific study areas—provides interpretations about the formation of protohistoric territories in the Centre-Val de Loire region. It does so through the study of three sequences of occupation over an extended time period from the following sites: Fort-Harrouard (an emblematic site for French protohistory), Sublaines (and its ‘princely’ barrow) and the area between Levroux and Châteauroux (a classic study area of the Early and Late Iron Age). This approach is supported by a historical investigation of the territories of the Carnutes, the Turones, and the Bituriges, with a main objective being to identify the transition of these territories into civitates before the Gallic Wars (basically, the transition towards a stately system). Sophie Krausz summarises this query on page 88: ‘When did these entities develop? And how did they achieve the configuration that Caesar appreciated?’ (trans. by author). While reading this chapter, many questions remain. The disparity of data and the archaeological documentation—sometimes extremely inconsistent (even lacunar) except for the nodal point of a territory (e.g. Fort-Harrouard)—considerably reduce the confidence of the proposed models. The author is not at fault here, and her work has to be praised for reassessing the data, critically reviewing older excavations, and re-setting some of the chronological evidence within new chrono-cultural time frames (from the Neolithic to the end of the Iron Age). Of course, in places, the reader may or may not agree with the newly proposed interpretations (the environment of the Sublaines tumulus, for example), but the critical assessment of the results of older excavations, and the new interpretations that emerge, allow for a certain reflection.
In the final chapter, the author largely sets the civitates of the Carnutes and the Turones aside to focus further on the best studied example: the territory of the Bituriges (although the other two areas are used in the conclusions to complete the reassessments). The aim here is to discuss the main problem, namely the study of the origin of Celtic states. From there, the workload increases and Sophie Krausz is determined to confront literary sources and archaeology with social and political anthropological models. This section of the study provides an occasion to debate some current perceptions related to the classification of society and political systems and in particular the current concepts of the state and of political power and prestige. In a few pages (pp. 294–305), therefore, the author presents a valuable assessment of proposed developments in ethnology and history, providing the reader with some conceptual background necessary for progressing further into her work. The various scenarios developed during the twentieth century concerning the formation of the state allow Krausz to conclude this part of the text, and to open another valuable evaluation, this time concerning the political systems of the Celts (pp. 309–25). This work, thorough and very beneficial for the reader not familiar with these concepts (such as students, for example), investigates classical sources referring to political systems in the Celtic world. These two significant sections provide the background for the author's suggested origins of the civitas of the Bituriges. In a few pages, Sophie Krausz proposes a full assessment of the second half of the first millennium bc around the city of Bourges, including a critical review of the archaeological and historical sources, from the mythical kingdom of Ambigatus to the Gallic Wars. At the end of this chapter, the author reconsiders the foundation, the rise, and the fall of the princely complex at Bourges, which is well defined in the central European Celtic world of the fifth century bc. Then she discusses the restructuration of this territory in the La Tène period, up to the appearance of oppida at Levroux, Châteaumeillant, and Bourges, which composed the boundaries of the civitas of the Bituriges, the social structures of which demonstrate the base of the state (p. 344).
In all, Sophie Krausz was up to the important task she resolved to undertake. Here, she provides a picture of some 5000 years in the Centre-Val de Loire, that allows firstly—and with more or less success depending on areas and periods—an understanding of the rhythm, the varied land occupation, and the dynamics of settlement; and secondly an investigation of notions of territory and territorial occupation that occurred during the emergence of complex political structures at the end of the first century bc. The study, based on archaeological data but also on written sources, at a time when the use of scientific equipment is increasingly prominent in the social sciences, is exemplary and deserves a large audience; students, archaeologists, and historians will find some food for thought here.
