In an otherwise glowing review of A.L.F. Rivet's Gallia Narbonensis (1988), A. laments ‘we must await another book that will concentrate on the major sites and monuments of Gallia Narbonensis and attempt to synthesize controversial material’ (AJA 96 [1992], 195). He has written that book himself. In his new publication he surveys and reviews the dating of southern Gaul's urban and architectural development. He claims that scholars have placed too much emphasis on the early imperial era, by concentrating on foundations at the expense of later reconstructions and by assigning early dates without corroborating evidence. He contends that the region in fact flourished architecturally in the late first and second centuries c.e., when Narbonensis had strong ties to the imperial family. Some of the empire's most famous monuments – the Arch at Orange, the Maison Carrée at Nîmes and the nearby Pont du Gard, to name a few – are implicated in his revisions. His survey is none the less refreshingly broad: shops, mills, ports and fortifications appear in addition to houses, theatres, amphitheatres, porticoes, etc. Anyone who teaches or researches Gallia Narbonensis will want to look carefully at the arguments.

The study is divided into four chapters of disparate length, and the organisation will likely invite discussion. The first two chapters introduce historical (pp. 1–17) and site backgrounds (pp. 18–60) respectively, while a brief fourth (pp. 234–6) serves as a conclusion. Most of the analysis lies in the lengthy third chapter (pp. 61–233) focused on ‘Roman Architectural Forms’. Analyses of the Corinthian order, monuments, and religious, civic, commercial, entertainment, hydraulic, domestic and funerary architecture split the chapter into nine sections; all but the first are further divided by building type. The ‘Architecture for Entertainment and Leisure’ category, for instance, addresses the theatre, odeum, amphitheatre, circus, stadium and library. Subsections typically explain the form's origins elsewhere, then consider iterations at Narbonese sites, without speculation on transmission. Subheadings, variously formatted, are generally successful in orienting the reader within the scheme. The complicated format does have benefits, principally in allowing A. to dwell on difficult debates about chronology, while tracing a particular building's transformation over time. Many readers will return to consult individual entries as they would a catalogue, though A. does not intend his study to be encyclopedic. Unfortunately, the terse table of contents indicates only chapter beginnings; buildings and sites must be located with the index.

Not everyone will accept the new chronologies proposed in many entries. Those familiar with A.’s 1987 article on the Arch at Orange, wherein he argues for an early third century (Severan) date, and his 2001 article on the Maison Carrée at Nîmes, in which he proposes an early second century (Hadrianic) date, know that he does not shy from controversy. Here, he reprises those arguments based on design, mouldings, recarved inscriptions and historical circumstances (pp. 81–93, 104–11), and offers similarly provocative readings of other sites. In the interim, A.’s chief interlocutor P. Gros has reaffirmed his support for the early Julio-Claudian affiliation of both the Orange arch and Nîmes temple in La Gaule Narbonnaise (2008, pp. 50, 67–9). Yet even if A. does not convince everyone, he is right to draw attention to an Augustan bias in the traditional dating of disputed remains. Why, for instance, do specialist and introductory texts alike assign the Pont du Gard to the Augustan era, if neither epigraphic nor stratigraphic evidence confirms an early date for the aqueduct's river crossing (pp. 193–7)? A.’s cogent scrutiny of opinions and data should prompt readers to reconsider what we know and do not know about southern Gaul's dynamic built environment.

The book's tight focus on architectural chronology yields valuable questions about the rhythms of urbanism and landscape management in this Roman province. Unfortunately, the lived experience of Romanisation fades from view, despite a nuanced introduction. In the first chapter, A. describes the adaptation of earlier cultural practices in everyday life and art and states his intent to consider the ‘ongoing dialogue between Rome itself and the builders in one of its oldest and closest provinces’ (p. 5). In what follows, the buildings themselves become the dialogue's endpoint, and little room is left to consider how varied their reception and use might have been. The fact of the successful Narbonese translation of a Roman form, be it an amphitheatre, public bath or workshop, suffices. A.’s approach thus stands at odds with recent work by J. Frakes, Framing Public Life: the Portico in Roman Gaul (2009) and L. Revell, Roman Imperialism and Local Identities (2009); both reassess Roman provincial buildings as settings for the negotiation of imperial life. Attention to behaviour, for example, allows Revell to gauge the ‘native’ and ‘Roman’ aspects of the water sanctuary at Bath, England (pp. 118–29) and to problematise the two categories. In contrast, when A. deals with the indigenous sacred springs at Nîmes and Glanum, he concentrates on discerning the phases of their Roman monumentalisation (pp. 183–90).

Romanisation, though initially framed as a dialogue, regrettably becomes a monologue in the brief, two-and-a-half-page conclusion, where A. lauds ‘the remarkable consistency of development and the extraordinary effectiveness on both public and private architecture of the long-term Romanization of Gallia Narbonensis’ (p. 234). Yet preceding chapters reveal both a rich exchange and a selective adoption of Roman forms. Roman Gaul's ongoing experimentation with Hellenic culture, partly the legacy of Greek Marseille and its agents (pp. 22–6), is clear in the section devoted to ‘Construction, Decoration, and the Corinthian Order’ (pp. 61–4). Here, A. keenly describes Corinthian column capitals not conforming to canonical norms established by Augustan Rome. Furthermore, ‘Domestic Architecture’ (pp. 200–21) addresses the simultaneous appearance of Greek peristyle and Roman atrium plans, their longevity and novel recombination in following centuries.

Though the book's contribution as an architectural survey and chronological review is substantial, its impact could have been increased by pulling the argument's Romanisation thread more fully into a lengthier conclusion. Doing so in a way that matched the introduction's nuance would have made the conclusion's emphasis on the imperial family's regional ties all the more compelling. Antoninus Pius (r. 138–61) had a consular grandfather from Nîmes; Plotina, wife of Hispanic Trajan (r. 98–117), may have hailed from Nîmes too (pp. 14, 235). This is a point worth dwelling on, all the more so because Agricola, the general whose architectural Romanisation of Britain is so famously critiqued by Tacitus (Agr. 21) and mentioned by A. (p. 4), also had roots in the region. When provincial architecture shaped the expectations of the empire's itinerant ruling class, Romanisation invites a more subtle and detailed concluding statement.