After the Roman conquest, the Gallic farms known as aristocratic were abandoned in favor of the villae. The villa is above all a center of agricultural production which includes spaces of culture or breeding in its pars rustica but it is also a place of storage and habitat in its pars urbana. This habitat is very often associated with a bathhouse, reflecting Roman hygiene practices.
This evolution in the way of occupying space is also reflected in the techniques used since the local architecture goes from a wooden frame filled with cob the almost systematic use of stone for the building bases when it is not for the entire elevations.
This cultural shift is also reflected in the appropriation of production or processing techniques employed. The presence of bipartite mounds, one of which is fixed (the meta, often made of hard rock) and the other movable (the catillus, often made of sandstone) is one of the main markers of this cultural change. On the one hand, because this type of domestic instrument is widespread and reveals that the evolution of practices is widespread, and on the other hand, because the different origin of the rocks of each of the two millstone parts reflects an economy that has become extra-local.
"Grain mill composed of 2 parts: the fixed lower part or ""meta"" and the mobile upper part or ""catillus"". The two parts are made of two different materials (sandstone and granite)".
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