'Gallica Belgica' by Edith M. Wightman: a historical assessment twenty years later

E. Wightman's work, Gallica Belgica, published in 1985, still remains today's most recent available synthesis on the economic and social history of the province. In spite of the advances achieved by archaeological research over the past 20 years, the scientific quality of this work still imposes itself on the level of the methodological approach by its capacity to integrate all the available sources (archaeological, literary and epigraphical), with the underlying reference to K. Hopkins's new (in the early 80s) "taxes and trade" economic model. After an introduction to the main findings brought by E. Wightman's work, this paper concludes with a quick excursus of the novelties brought to the study of the Romanization of the countryside through the latest field work.