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International audience; This article is a critical reappraisal of recent syntheses on ancient demography and it aims at presenting some alternative reflexions. First, the neo-Malthusian historiographic outline, according which the demographic growth of ancient societies would have been blocked by the archaic and non-evolving character of the agriculture and by the law of diminishing returns, is presented. These societies, because they were hampered by the low equilibrium trap, would have remained at a steady state determined by their technological level and by their carrying capacity. According to this economic model, the production capacity of the land is often considered as an exogenous factor and is thought to be determined mainly by its natural characteristics. To this outline are opposed the ideas of Esther Boserup, who considers that the demographic pressure may be the cause of the agricultural intensification and of the exploitation of new land. This paradigm is used to analyze the expansion of agriculture in four areas of northern Gaul. In these four cases, family farms are responsible for the expansion, by means of adjustments of the ager and improvements of the soil agricultural capability. In conclusion is offered a reflexion on the social and economic circumstances of these processes and on the capacity of the Gallo-Roman societies to "make agricultural lands".; Cet article consiste en la critique de synthèses récentes sur la démographie antique et en la présentation de réflexions alternatives. Est donc présenté le schéma historiographique, d’inspiration néomalthusien selon lequel l’accroissement démographique des sociétés antiques aurait été bloqué par l’archaïsme et l’immobilisme de l’agriculture et la « loi » des rendements décroissants. Entravées par le « piège malthusien » que font peser sur elles l’accroissement de la population, elles seraient demeurées à un état stationnaire, déterminé par leur niveau technologique et l’optimum de peuplement des territoires. Pour ce modèle économique, la capacité productive des terroirs est souvent considérée comme une donnée exogène, dépendant essentiellement de leurs caractéristiques naturelles. Il lui est opposé les idées d’Ester Boserup qui considère que la pression démographique peut être à l’origine de l’intensification agricole et de la mise en culture de nouveaux terroirs. Ce paradigme est mobilisé pour analyser les conquêtes agricoles de quatre terroirs du nord des Gaules. Elles ont en commun d’être réalisées par des exploitations familiales, au moyen d’aménagements de l’ager et de l’amélioration des capacités agricoles des sols. En conclusion, on s’interroge sur les conditions sociales et économiques de ces processus et sur les capacités des sociétés gallo-romaines à « fabriquer des terres agricoles ».

In the middle of the first millennium BC small-scale societies (local or even family level communities) on the Eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula were rapidly transformed, socially and culturally, into complex ones of at least tens of thousands of people and endowed with centralised forms of political organization that controlled vast territories, often of several thousand square kilometres. From the beginning of the 4th century BC, the rapid expansion of writing suggests the establishment of an administrative system and the development of the institutional complexity particular to the archaic states. These states were governed by kings who emerged from the aristocratic ranks that dominated the diverse communities forming the bulk of the population. We know from Greco-Latin sources that the inhabitants of these territories were known by the name of Iberians, and that this ethnic group was divided into different peoples that in some cases corresponded to the afore mentioned political entities, whereas in other cases several of them must have been included. Epigraphy shows that the same language was used in the whole of this region, although perhaps not exclusively; in modern times it is known as ‘Iberian’, and cannot be deciphered. Incorporation into the Roman world around 200 BC meant a gradual integration into Latin culture, that was completed a little before the change of era.

This article aims to analyse the extent and diversity of mobility and migration among the freeborn population in Italy, limiting itself primarily to the second century BC. In particular, it offers a correction to recent quantitative models of the demography of ancient Rome, by reconsidering the impact of the urban graveyard effect, temporary migration, the sex ratio and urban fertility.