Basilica forensis

Dissertação de Mestrado apresentada no Programa de Pós-Graduação do MAE-USP - Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia da Universidade de São paulo, Brasil.
Abstract: According to Zanker (2000:36-7), the Roman Basilica is one of the most characteristic Roman structures of any Roman city. A concrete symbol of the political, juridic and social Roman structure, it suffered morphologic and funcional alteractions both in time and space that still intrigate the scholars. The present work tries to reveal and understand this structure, its origins, its main physical and functional caracteristics, its transformations in Rome and the Empire, but most specially in the Gallia Comata, seeing it as an element of the process of urbanization of the Gallic privinciae. To do so, we performed a study of the basilicas since its begnning, in Rome, its difusion by the Empire and, like a means to know the basilicas of the Three Gauls (Lugdunensis, Aquitanica and Belgium, this one divided into Belgica, Germania Superior and Germania Inferior), a catalog was made, searching, besides the typological differences, the homogeneity in their utilization as elements of Roman urbanization of the former Gallia Comata. And, for better understanding the urbanization, it was studied the Gallic oppida (hillforts), the Celtic proto-cities of the II and I centuries BC, the period that immediately preceded the period of the Roman conquest.