1 Authors’ Original Manuscript ‐ Postprint This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published as: Tom Moore, Arno Braun, John Creighton, Laura Cripps, Peter Haupt, Ines Klenner, Pierre Nouvel, Côme Ponroy and Martin Schönfelder (2013) Oppida, Agglomerations, and Suburbia: the Bibracte Environs and New Perspectives on Late Iron Age Urbanism in Central‐Eastern France. European Journal of Archaeology, 16 (3) 2013, 491–517 Published edition, available through Mayney online at: http://www.maneyonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1179/1461957113Y.0000000034 Oppida, agglomerations and suburbia: The Bibracte environs and new perspectives on Late Iron Age urbanism in central‐eastern France Tom Moore 1 , Arno Braun 2 , John Creighton 3 , Laura Cripps 4 , Peter Haupt 2 , Ines Klenner 5 , Pierre Nouvel 6 , Côme Ponroy 1 and Martin Schönfelder 7 1 Department of Archaeology, Durham University, UK 2 Institut für Vor‐ und Frühgeschichte, Johannes‐Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Germany 3 Department of Archaeology, University of Reading, UK 4 Department of Anthropology, Howard Community College, USA 5 Archäologisches Institut, Universität Hamburg, Germany 6 Département d’histoire de l’art et d’Archéologie Université de Franche‐Comté, France 7 Forschungsinstitut für Archäologie, Römisch‐Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Germany Abstract This paper explores the nature and chronology of La Tène and early Roman unenclosed agglomerations in central‐eastern France. It has been prompted by the discovery of a c. 115 ha La Tène D2b/Augustan (c. 50 BC to AD 15) site close to Bibracte in the Morvan, focused around the source of the river Yonne. This complex provides a new perspective on the chronology and role of Late La Tène and early Roman unenclosed settlements, adding further complexity to the story of the development of Late La Tène oppida. It indicates that these ‘agglomerations’ followed remarkably varied chronological trajectories, raising important issues concerning the nature of landscape and social change at the end of the Iron Age. Keywords: La Tène, oppidum, France, agglomeration, landscape archaeology. Introduction One of the most significant transformations in later prehistoric Europe is the appearance of the large enclosed settlements known as oppida. These sites are often regarded as the beginnings of urbanism in Europe which marked the rise of proto‐state communities and were the focus of engagement with the expanding Roman Empire (Collis, 1984; Fichtl, 2005). However, it is recognised that the concept of Late La Tène (c. 250 to 30 BC) oppida as a unified group obscures a more complex picture of urban