• 1 The word ‘frontière’ encompasses the meanings of ‘border’, ‘frontier’ and ‘boundary’.

Since the beginning of the 20^th century, the concept of frontière1 has been considerably enriched. The confrontation between the different fields of ancient societies on the one hand, and with various social sciences on the other, has given rise to new conceptual tools and methods of analysis. However, no single approach nor definition has reached a consensus among specialists, which preserves the theme from the threat of standardization, and allows diverging perspectives.

• 2 Which foundations were laid by F. Ratzel 1987.
• 3 Lacoste 1985, p. 60.
• 4 On this issue, see Whittaker 2008.
• 5 Lacoste 1985, p. 60.
• 6 E.g. on this question: Hartog 1996; Nicolet 1996; Horden et Purcell 2000; Arnaud 2005; Whittaker 20 (...)
• 7 Turner 1921.
• 8 For a precise definition, see Bertrand and Planas 2017.
• 9 Lattimore 1962.
• 10 Wallerstein 1974.

Since the 19^th century, specialists of the ancient societies have been particularly attracted by a political approach2 of ancient territories, which presents the border as a ‘front’ or a ‘frontier’, both natural and constructed. This understanding is based on etymology: in its original meaning, the term ‘frontier’ – frontière in French – derives from military terminology. Before being a state demarcation, it was a battlefront. This approach of the border, which stems from traditional human and physical geography, is thus strongly influenced by the ‘geography of military officers’,3 and initially conceived to annex, control and administer territories. Even today, ancient borders are still primarily understood as political, administrative and strategic boundaries.4 This view largely dominates the international historical and archaeological literature. The conception of ancient political, administrative or military frontiers has, however, evolved since Lucien Febvre’s5 re-examination of the traditional approach. It is now commonly accepted that the borders were neither natural, linear, fixed nor hermetic. Researchers thus consider these borders as dynamic interfaces, integrated into a reticular system and creating specific cultural, political, memorial or ethnic identities6. In particular, their ‘natural’ or arbitrary character, the phenomena of circumvention, deterioration, contestation, their coincidence with peoples, civilizations and nations, or the processes of ‘thickening’ and erasure are discussed. These issues result from the appropriation by researchers of concepts borrowed from the study of medieval, modern and contemporary colonial societies: in particular, the concept of ‘frontier’, developed by Frederik Jackson Turner,7 from which the notion of ‘frontier society’8 derives, but also the concepts of ‘fronder of inclusion’ and ‘fronder of exclusion’ formulated by Owen Lattimore9, and that of ‘centre and periphery’, developed by Immanuel Wallerstein.10

• 11 To cite only the canonical works, see Barth 1969, Cohen 1988 or Paasi 1996.
• 12 E.g. Brown 1981, or more recently in Charpentier and Boehm 2015.
• 13 Leveau 1984.
• 14 E.g. Excoffon and Gaucher 2017.

The influence of sociology, anthropology and cultural geography11 led a growing number of researchers to approach the borders in a broader meaning. The terms ‘social borders’, ‘cultural borders’ or ‘symbolic borders’ are becoming more frequent in the literature.12 Until the second half of the 19^th century, law, literature, inscriptions and toponymy were deemed to be the only sources of knowledge about ancient territories.13 Since then, the encounter between geography, history and archaeology has produced stimulating reflections on the concept of ‘inhabiting’, ‘border-barrier’ or interface.14

• 15 Carrié 1995.
• 16 Reprinted partly in Vernant 2004.
• 17 We borrow here the expression of M. Foucher 2012. On this issue, see Casevitz 1993.
• 18 Casevitz 1993, p. 23.

However, the application of analytical models borrowed from other social sciences still raises many apprehensions. Several specialists have recalled the need to remain cautious about external methodological imports. Thus, in 1993, Jean-Michel Carrié raised the dangers of a ‘phenomenology of the frontier’, and through it, of a dissolution of the issues specific to ancient societies.15 However, this redefinition of the term ‘border’ is not entirely new or purely exogenous. We can think of Jean Pierre Vernant’s reflections, from the 1960s to the 1990s, on the frontiers of death, otherness, religion or on the epistemological limits between past and present.16 But more importantly, the notion of ‘frontier’ is itself an anachronism for ancient societies. Indeed, it is possible to associate with the French term frontière a great variety of ancient and medieval terms that embrace a multitude of boundaries, margins, confines, fronts and demarcations that our contemporary vocabulary fails to translate accurately. Ancient societies, perhaps more than our own, had thus a real ‘obsession with borders’.17 Thus, as Michel Casevitz rightly points out, the difficulty dealing with ancient borders lies in the fact that ‘whether confines or term, the notion of “border”, as revealed by words, has never been defined, never been limited’.18