Roman manor "In the hamlet"
The Roman estate "Im Weiler" was a Roman villa rustica on the parcel "Im Weiler" in Schuld in Rhineland-Palatinate . With the Roman villa of Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler , the complex is one of the best-preserved Roman manors in the Ahrweiler district .
location
The location for the villa rustica was carefully chosen by the Roman builders. The complex was 270 m above sea level. NN at the lower end of a side valley of the Ahr . The river passed around 150 meters to the west as a loop . The villa rustica was located below a steep slope, which protected against the weather from the north. In the immediately adjacent, flatter area, there was sufficient space that was suitable for agricultural cultivation. The water supply was secured by a brook that sprang from a spring above and flowed through a channel under the main house.
description
The villa rustica was built in the 1st century AD and was inhabited until the middle of the 4th century, as indicated by coin finds. A later Germanic further use is assumed, since Pingsdorf pottery was found from early medieval times.
The total size of the courtyard is estimated at around 2.2 hectares. Around one hectare of this was used as an economic area. About 1.2 hectares of the area served as a representative area.
The main house was a building in the usual portico scheme with corner projections . It had 20 rooms and a size of about 30 × 40 meters and a 32 m² cellar. Inside the building there was an approximately 11 × 11 meter living and utility room with a hearth. Living and sleeping rooms, which were equipped with hypocaust heating , were grouped around him . There were at least four outbuildings on the site that served as living rooms, stables and storage rooms.
The villa rustica was a medium-sized property with a certain wealth of residents. Individual finds, such as a silver spoon handle, oyster shells, terra sigillata and a Roman bronze bell, as well as a bathing area, indicate this. Ceramics from Trier and coins minted in Turkey point to brisk trading activity in the vicinity of the court . There are no traces of violent destruction of the facility.
Research history
The parcel "In the hamlet", on which the site is located, was an overgrown fallow area until the beginning of the 20th century that could not be used for agriculture because of the stone material on it. Since farmers kept finding relics from Roman times in the surrounding fields, the residents of Schuld had known for a long time that there was a deserted settlement on the parcel . Ancient building materials, such as tuff , were collected and reused in the construction of buildings on site. The site was made known to the preservation authorities in 1907 through a report to the Landesmuseum Bonn . The background to the report was the planned clearing of the stone material for tillage, which ultimately did not take place. Rumors were circulating in the village of Schuld about finds on the former settlement area. In 1906 and 1912, after a stone head was found, treasure hunts and robbery excavations are said to have taken place .
After a find report by a professor from Berlin, employees of the Landesmuseum Bonn carried out an on-site inspection of the site in 1939, which was first mentioned in scientific literature in 1939/1940. Since there was no immediate threat to the site, no further measures were taken.
1960s excavations
During the expansion of the road from Sierscheid to Schuld in connection with land consolidation , the site was rediscovered in 1962. When overgrown wall sections and remnants of masonry canals, roof tiles and round tiles as well as mosaic parts of a floor came to light during excavation work, a report was made to the Office for Prehistory and Early History in Koblenz. It was paid for by the Funke-Kaiser couple from Cologne, who owned a weekend house above the site. By backfilling the road during the construction work, a smaller part of Villa Rustica was covered and thus protected.
The Funke-Kaiser couple bought the site in 1963 and provided the Koblenz Office for Prehistory and Early History with financial and material resources for an excavation . In the first excavation campaign in 1963 and 1964, only the course of the wall was exposed in order to get an impression of the overall extent of the complex. Further excavation campaigns followed in 1965 and 1967 for the systematic investigation of the main house. The last excavation was carried out in 1968 by the Archaeological Institute of the University of Cologne . The excavation results were published in 1976 and 1982.
Even at the beginning of the excavation, a Roman origin could be proven on the basis of folded roof tiles, painted plaster and water pipes. During prospecting in the area south of the main building, three auxiliary buildings could be detected. Another outbuilding was made known by a farmer's tip. These sites have not yet been excavated. Since the end of the excavations, bushes and trees have overgrown the unsecured excavation site. The site and the surrounding area were designated as an excavation protection area in 2016.
More recent prospections were carried out in 2016 using geophysical methods by the Archaeological Institute of the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg . Remnants of the wall could be recognized in the ground. In a terrain model generated with the measurements, elevations could be recognized that indicated the location and structure of earlier buildings.
Found objects
During the excavations in the 1960s, numerous finds were recovered. This includes flat glass fragments from window glazing as well as ceramic shards from oil and wine jugs, cups, plates, bowls and storage vessels. Some of them are on display in the permanent exhibition of the Roman villa in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler .
In 1968 a 42 × 25 centimeter mosaic fragment of the floor was recovered, which was restored in 2015. A special find is a square tile plate with a side length of 58 cm, which was found in 1962 and has the following incised inscription in Latin:
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The inscription carved into the clay before the fire apparently served a brick manufacturer in the manner of a note as evidence of orders and deliveries. It shows the everyday use of writing in Roman times.
- Individual finds
Fragment of a Roman floor mosaic, recovered in 1968
Column base from the 2nd to 3rd centuries
Tableware made from Terra Sigillata
Presumably remains of a Roman stone at the excavation site
Support association
In 2015 the “Förderverein Römischer Gutshof Schuld” was founded in Schuld. He has set himself the goal of preserving the remains of the facility, presenting them to the public and making them accessible to tourists for the AhrSteigs that are passing by . Concrete plans consist of the deforestation and exposure of the area as well as the securing and fastening of the existing masonry. Work on this is to begin in 2019. They are possible after the development association concluded a 12-year user contract with the property owner of the site in 2018. The property with the site belongs to the archaeologist Eberhard Thomas, who teaches at the Archaeological Institute of the University of Cologne .
See also
literature
- Hubertus Ritzdorf: Roman villa guilt. A manor 2000 years ago , 2010
Web links
- The villa rustica in debt as a reconstruction
- Description at the Preuss Collection, Ursula and Karl-Heinz Preuss Collections of Antiquities
- Aerial photo, site sketches and excavation photos at the guilty tourist office
- Website of the Förderverein Römischer Gutshof Schuld eV
- Floor plan of the Roman manor "Im Weiler"
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ute Müller: The Roman estate in Schuld was once magnificent
- ↑ Ute Müller: Romans in debt: New findings in Rhein-Zeitung from November 23, 2017
- ↑ Prof. Dr. Eberhard Thomas gives a lecture on the Roman estate in debt in Adenauer Nachrichten No. 52/53 2015
- ^ Jan Zawadil: Roman villa in deep sleep in Rhein-Zeitung Koblenz from October 26, 2005
- ↑ Protection of the Roman villa debt press release from November 26, 2016
- ↑ Werner Dreschers: Students are looking for traces of the Roman villa in the Rhein-Zeitung of March 30, 2016
- ↑ Geomagnetic campaign spring 2016 with unexpected new discoveries at the Institute for Prehistory and Protohistory of the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg .
- ↑ Roman mosaic restored in General-Anzeiger of September 29, 2015
- ↑ Roman mosaic restored as pdf
- ^ Römischer Gutshof "Im Weiler" when guilty of the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate
- ^ Foundation of the Association for the Promotion of the Roman Manor
- ↑ Günther Schmitt: Association should save ancient villa in General-Anzeiger from December 5, 2014
- ↑ Horst Gies (MdL) visited the Roman villa in Schuld at CDU Adenau on February 1, 2016
- ↑ Nature has brought back the manor in Wochenspiegel of December 7, 2018
Coordinates: 50 ° 26 '58 " N , 6 ° 53' 38.7" E