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CHATEAUMEILLANT (Town) FRANCE
Mediolanum Biturigum (Chateaumeillant) Cher, France.
The Mediolanum of the Peutinger Table between Neris (Aquae Nerii) and Argenton
(Argentomagus) can be identified with the modern Chateaumeillant. Five Roman roads
met there, including one coming from the Rhone valley and the Argenton road leading
W. The oppidum covered 18 ha. It was protected to the S by a wall, to the E and
W by two small rivers, and to the N, above the junction of the rivers, by a ditch,
which can be recognized, crossing the mediaeval town.
The old finds (material filling ancient pits and ditches, massive
stores of amphorae) were attributed without distinction to the Roman period. Excavations
were begun in 1956 in the settlement and in the sloping rampart; they demonstrate
the importance of the Gallic town. New trenches were found with amphorae aligned
in them: some of them were simply stores of empty or used receptacles; others
were wine cellars which had been abandoned suddenly. All the amphorae found in
groups at Chateaumeillant are Republican: Dressel IA Italic types and variants
of the Graeco-Italic types with wide or elongated bodies. There were small pieces
of floors and remains of diggings, with abundant pottery dating from the end of
La Tene II to about 30 B.C.; dumps of the time of Augustus and the Julio-Claudians
in the dug-out bottoms of earlier dwellings; and pits filled with trash of the
earlier Empire. Under the sloping rampart there was a murus gallicus with posts
notched together and with stone facings. It contained preconquest pottery with
polished features. The murus was already damaged when it was covered by the sloping
construction, probably at the beginning of the Gallo-Roman period.
Mediolanum provides one of the richest deposits of amphorae on land.
It played an important part, either as a stopping point or a market, in the Italian
wine trade from the end of the 2d c. B.C. until the period of the conquest (and
perhaps later, since its destruction in 52 B.C. is not certain). This trade ended
before the appearance of the large amphorae of the time of Augustus, rare at Mediolanum.
An earth wall covered the ruined murus at that time. The settlement was active
in the 1st c. A.D., but retained clay dwellings of traditional type. It continued
to exist in the 2d c., but no public monument of Roman type was built. It seems
to have suffered during the invasions of the 3d c. and vegetated in the Late Empire.
This idiosyncratic history and the exceptional potential for studies of pottery,
both before and after the conquest, are among the major points of interest at
the site of Mediolanum.
The local museum has on exhibit remains of the murus gallicus, a bust
of a god with a torque found in a ritual pit of the time of Augustus, and a first-class
ceramic collection. The Bourges museum has a part of the old finds.
H. Hugoniot, ed.
This text is from: The Princeton encyclopedia of classical sites,
Princeton University Press 1976. Cited Feb 2006 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
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