Communal eating and drinking in early Roman Mediterranean France: a possible tavern at Lattara , c . 125–75 BC

Abstract

Despite being institutions of major social importance throughout the Roman world, taverns remain poorly understood archaeologically. The identification of one such possible tavern at the Iron Age and Roman site of Lattara in Mediterranean France is hence a discovery of special significance. Not only is the tavern the earliest of its kind in the region, it also serves as an invaluable indicator of the changing social and economic infrastructure of the settlement and its inhabitants following the Roman conquest of Mediterranean Gaul in the late second century BC.