Daily life in Entremont during the 2nd century BCE

At Entremont, near modern Aix-en-Provence in southern France, excavated houses and working equipment reveal a fortified community of the Salyens. Everyday life involved storing crops, grinding grain and making or repairing objects, alongside the political world represented by the site's sculpture.

A settlement that changed within a century

Entremont stood in the hinterland of Marseille, in the territory of the Salyens. The French Ministry of Culture’s archaeological synthesis dates two major construction phases to approximately 175 and 150 BCE. Daily life therefore changed as the settlement expanded; its excavated remains should not be treated as a picture of one unchanging community throughout the entire century.

This account follows that synthesis, which identifies its content as originally published in 2001 and reproduced unchanged in 2020. Its chronology and interpretations provide a useful framework, rather than a claim to incorporate every subsequent excavation. See the Ministry of Culture’s introduction to Entremont.

Homes were places of storage and adaptation

In the expanded settlement, called Habitat II by archaeologists, houses had between two and five rooms. Their plans generally joined rooms together without the private central courtyard characteristic of Greek houses. Excavation also indicates upper floors; flat terrace roofs are suggested rather than certain.

One particularly concrete example is house 7 in block 8. Excavators recorded successive beaten-earth floors, a mudbrick partition, an additional doorway onto the street and a small stone bench. These changes show that domestic interiors were adapted over time. Their relationship to the disturbances near the settlement’s end remains uncertain.

The lower settlement survives better than the earlier occupation, partly because fallen rampart material retained the deposits. Our fuller knowledge of these homes therefore reflects preservation as well as ancient behaviour. See Les habitations.

Storing harvests and preparing food

Cereals, grapes and olives are attested at Entremont. Large storage jars, known as dolia, and a large silo provide direct evidence for keeping agricultural produce. A jar’s presence alone does not identify its contents: such vessels could hold grain, oil or wine.

Basalt millstones show how grain became flour. Both reciprocating hopper mills and rotary mills occur, with the former less common. Grinding was one of the practical stages between a stored harvest and food ready for further preparation; the equipment does not establish each household’s menu or who performed the work.

Stone components of presses also survive, some in position and many broken or reused in later construction. They support evidence for processing olives and grapes, while reminding us that an object’s final location need not be where it originally worked. See L’agriculture.

Making and repairing things across the settlement

Manufacturing waste provides evidence for skilled bronze and glass working. Tools, slag and supplies of lead also illuminate work with metals, wood and stone, although the Ministry’s account is less certain about identifying dedicated specialists in iron and lead.

Production was dispersed through the settlement. The archaeological interpretation includes forging inside dwellings as well as collective work around groups of furnaces. Houses could therefore accommodate productive tasks alongside other domestic activities.

This distribution weakens an older interpretation that sharply separated an elite residential district from a district of farming and crafts. It does not prove that everyone enjoyed equal status. Nor do these finds identify the age, gender or daily schedule of every worker. See L’artisanat.

Daily life in Entremont during the 2nd century BCE

A settlement that changed within a century

Homes were places of storage and adaptation

Storing harvests and preparing food

Making and repairing things across the settlement

Sources and further reading