Vicus Lindfeld

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Remains of the theater

The Vicus Lindfeld was a Roman settlement ( vicus ) near Lenzburg in Switzerland that existed from the 1st to the 3rd century. It was on the Lindfeld, a high plateau between Aabach and Bünz , about one kilometer northeast of today's old town. The name of the settlement has not been passed down. The archaeological sites, which include the remains of a theater for 4,000 spectators, are a cultural asset of national importance .

history

The settlement was probably built in the second quarter of the 1st century and was located about ten kilometers south of the legionary camp Vindonissa (today Windisch ) in the middle of an agricultural area. The Latin name of the place has not been passed down. Linguistic research suggests that it might be Lentia . This term is derived from an old European river name, which can be paraphrased as “the flexible one” or “the curved one” and probably refers to the Aabach, which was still called the Lenzbach in the Middle Ages .

The settlement experienced its economic peak in the late 1st and 2nd centuries. Around 400 to 600 people lived there at that time. The most important building discovered so far is a theater, which was probably part of a religious center of national importance. From the end of the 2nd century the theater was no longer used, the settlement was probably around 260 by the plundering of the Alemanni abandoned and visited only sporadically in the following decades.

Finds

Smaller parts of the settlement were first encountered in 1873 during the construction of the Aargau Southern Railway , a railway line leading from Rupperswil via Lenzburg to Arth-Goldau . Other ruins were cut in the 1930s as part of various goods regulations . Coordinated excavations took place in 1950 and 1963/64. The latter were related to the construction of a slip road to the A1 motorway . The Aargau cantonal archeology exposed large parts of the street village. The discovery of the theater, built in the third quarter of the 1st century, was a particular surprise. In 1974, parts of a fire burial site were discovered in the Lindwald forest to the northeast .

The vicus was laid out as a street village about 400 meters long and extended in a west-east direction along a six-meter-wide main road. The center of the settlement was north of the railway line in the area of ​​the intersection of the Lenzburg – Othmarsingen canton road with the motorway feeder. The houses were designed in the form of taberns with a covered portico in front . Remnants of military objects as well as brick stamps of the Legio XXI Rapax and the Legio XI Claudia indicate the existence of a control post.

Around 250 meters north of the vicus is the stone-built theater on a gently sloping slope to the east, which offered space for around 4,000 spectators. The front wall is 74 meters long and is divided into three equal parts by two passages. Three radial corridors and a semicircular corridor divide the auditorium into four sectors and two tiers. Remains of benches made of elongated stone blocks have also been preserved. Aerial photographs show that there were other buildings southwest of the theater, but these have not yet been exposed. This includes at least two temples .

literature

  • Martin Hartmann, Hans Weber: The Romans in Aargau . Sauerländer, Aarau 1985, ISBN 3-7941-2539-8 , pp. 179-181 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Beat Zehnder: The community names of the canton of Aargau . Verlag Sauerländer, Aarau 1991, ISBN 3-7941-3122-3 , p. 247-250 ( Argovia . Volume 100).

Coordinates: 47 ° 24 '  N , 8 ° 11'  E ; CH1903:  656782  /  249589