Villa Rustica (Messkirch)
The villa rustica (also: old town ) is located west of Meßkirch , a small town in the Sigmaringen district in Baden-Württemberg . It is a former Roman estate . With an area of almost eight hectares, it is considered the largest known Roman estate in southwest Germany. Today only rubble mounds and ramparts as well as the reconstructed foundation walls of a small temple complex of the hunting goddess Diana are preserved above ground .
location
The Roman estate is located about 4.5 km west of Meßkirch, about halfway between the Messkirch district of Heudorf and the Sauldorf district of Hölzle. The ground monument is located in the “Bändlehau” forest and extends about halfway on both sides of the federal road 311 that cuts through the area . The Temple of Diana is located on the northern side, a little outside the former courtyard.
In Roman times, the manor probably had a not insignificant position within the rural settlement of this region due to its size.
Research history
From 1834 to 1836 this settlement was first excavated, measured and published in a small brochure by the Bietingen pastor Joseph Anton Eitenbenz. Eitenbenz interpreted the findings as a Roman fortress with a praetorium , quaestorium , apartment for the cohort , a hospital, the gates of a winter camp . Eitenbenz's discovery of the old town as a castrum from Roman times suggests the Ptolemaic "Bragodurum" here .
In 1864 Eduard von Peucker made the claim that the old town was "Samulocenis" . This means that the fortified hill near Meßkirch was the base for the defense of the entire mountainous terrain within the arched course of the Danube between Möhringen ( Möhringen an der Donau ) and Ennentach ( Ennetach ) to the northern shore of Lake Constance.
More extensive archaeological excavations , in which the settlement could be clearly identified as Villa rustica, were carried out by J. Näher in 1882 on behalf of Prince zu Fürstenberg .
In 1977 and 1978, due to the re-routing of the federal highway 311, new excavations were necessary, in the course of which, among other things, the Diana temple, which had already been discovered during the excavations of 1882, was exposed again and then preserved and partially reconstructed.
grange
The excavations uncovered a 1.2 km long enclosure wall that encloses a trapezoidal area of almost 8 hectares. The walling with sides on the north side 216 m, south side 260 m, west side 354 m, east side 310 m. With this enclosed area, the old town villa rustica is the largest currently known Roman estate in southwest Germany. A total of 17 stone buildings were located within the enclosure. Slightly shifted from the center in a north-easterly direction, the property was dominated by the manor house, a portico villa of around 1600 m² including the inner courtyard with corner risers . Two of their rooms could be heated by a hypocaust system.
Among the other buildings, two thermal baths that can also be heated using hypocaust systems could be identified. These bathhouses and the entire property were supplied with the necessary water via two wells. They stand out as two high mounds of rubble around 100 meters south of the road.
The other 14 buildings were archaeologically recorded and recorded, but their function has so far eluded any conclusive interpretation.
The isolated manor was surrounded by an 80 cm thick wall, which is said to have had up to 1.20 m high masonry at the nearer time. Today it can only be seen as a flat rubble wall in the area. Another inner wall in the southeast of the complex probably encompassed the area of the earliest construction phase of the probably multi-phase manor.
The villa rustica was probably built at the end of the first century AD and was likely to have existed until the first third of the 3rd century. Presumably she fell victim to one of the first Alemannic advances from 233 onwards.
Further knowledge about the individual development phases as well as about the function of the as yet unidentified buildings can only be obtained through large-scale excavations.
Temple of Diana
About 60 m from the northern perimeter wall removed ( 47 ° 59 '11 " N , 9 ° 3' 13" O ) is a smaller temple of evidenced by the inscription of a found already in the 1882er excavations ordination stone was dedicated to Diana. The inscription reads:
SACRVM
M (ARCVS) AVREL (IVS)
HONORATVS
PANCRATIVS
V (OTVM) S (OLVIT) L (IBENS) L (AETVS) M (ERITO)
Loosely translated: "Marcus Aurelius Honoratus Pancratius erected an altar to Diana by fulfilling his vows happily and freely for a fee."
Pancratius was probably the owner of the estate at a time that is not exactly known, probably in the 2nd or early 3rd century. The original consecration stone to the goddess Diana is in the Princely Fürstenberg Collections in Donaueschingen , a copy is set up on site.
Neither the 1982 excavation nor the investigations from 1977/1978 could provide complete information about the appearance of the temple in ancient times. With the side lengths of 3.9 m by 3.6 m, its base area was 14.04 m². It is certain that it was tiled and that the floor was covered with brick slabs. It can no longer be determined today whether the recent, rising limestone masonry, possibly provided with intermediate layers of tuff stone for visual structuring, reached up to the roof, or whether only a base was bricked and the rest of the walls consisted of half-timbering. Nor whether it was a stand-alone building or the cella of a Gallo-Roman temple , although the latter assumption is rather unlikely.
Preservation of findings, lost property and monument protection
The whereabouts of the Eitenbenz finds, including two ore Roman coins (one of the older Faustina , the wife of Antoninus Pius , and one of Commodus ) and vessels, is unsecured. Remains of the fragmented painting from the 2nd century AD are in the collection of the Württemberg State Museum in the Old Castle in Stuttgart . After considerations to preserve all the buildings uncovered during the excavations in the 1970s failed due to the poor state of preservation and the associated high costs, it was decided, as a compromise solution, to open at least the Temple of Diana and parts of a building attached to the western enclosure wall to the public do. A copy of the consecration stone was placed in the preserved and partially reconstructed temple. The original and other finds from the excavations are in the Fürstlich Fürstenberg collections in the castle museum in Donaueschingen. Information about Villa Rustica is provided by an information board at the parking lot on the north side of the street.
The ground monument "Villa Rustica Meßkirch" is protected as a registered cultural monument within the meaning of the Monument Protection Act of the State of Baden-Württemberg (DSchG) . Investigations and targeted collection of finds are subject to approval, and accidental finds are reported to the monument authorities.
Remarks
- ↑ The name Old Town refers to the fact that a submerged city was suspected here in the past.
- ^ Joseph Anton Eitenbenz: Roman settlement near Meßkirch . Bannhard, Constance 1836.
- ^ Johann Nepomuk von Raiser: The Upper Danube District of the Kingdom of Bavaria under the Romans . 1830, p. 14.
- ↑ The German war system of primeval times in its connections and interactions with the simultaneous state and popular life. Third part. The behavior of the German armies on the battlefield in the last two centuries before the beginning of our era . R. v. Decker 1864. p. 402.
- ↑ J. Näher: The excavation of the Roman settlement called the Altstatt near Meßkirch . In: Yearbook of the Association of Friends of Antiquity in the Rhineland, issue 74. S. 52ff. Marcus, Bonn 1882.
- ^ Hermann Bierl: Archaeological Guide Germany. Ground monuments and museums . Wek-Verlag . Treuchtlingen, Berlin 2007. ISBN 3-934145-39-6
- ↑ According to Hartmann Reim: A Roman temple building near Meßkirch, Sigmaringen district. In: Society for Prehistory and Early History in Württemberg and Hohenzollern eV (Ed.): Archaeological excavations 1978. Soil monument maintenance in the administrative districts of Stuttgart and Tübingen. Gentner, Stuttgart 1979, p. 68, there were “several carefully sawn tuff blocks” in the rubble of the temple.
- ↑ Heidelberg Yearbooks of Literature . 31st year. P. 1141, 1838
- ^ Edwin Ernst Weber: The prehistory and early history in the district of Sigmaringen . ed. from the district of Sigmaringen, department culture and archive, and Kulturforum district Sigmaringen eV 2009
- ↑ Official website of the castle museum .
literature
- Joseph Anton Eitenbenz: Roman branch near Meßkirch. Discovered and described by Pastor Eitenbenz zu Bietingen . Constance, Bauhard, 1836
- Julius Naeher : The Roman structures in the Zehntlanden (Baden Antheiles) - in particular: the villa layout, with an appendix about the excavation of the villa in Altstatt near Meßkirch . Karlsruhe, Macklot'sche Druckerei, 1883.
- Hartmann Reim : Messkirch.Gutshof. In: Dieter Planck (Ed.): The Romans in Baden-Württemberg . Theiss, Stuttgart, 2005, ISBN 3-8062-1555-3 , p. 210 f.
- Hartmann Reim: The Roman estate "Altstadt" near Meßkirch, Sigmaringen district. (Cultural monuments in Baden-Württemberg, p. 57). Baden-Württemberg State Monuments Office, Stuttgart 1989.
- Hartmann Reim: Meßkirch.Gutshof. In: Philipp Filtzinger , Dieter Planck and Bernhard Cämmerer (eds.): The Romans in Baden-Württemberg . 3. Edition. Theiss, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-8062-0287-7 , p. 442 ff.
- Hartmann Reim: A Roman temple building near Meßkirch, Sigmaringen district. In: Society for Prehistory and Early History in Württemberg and Hohenzollern eV (Ed.): Archaeological excavations 1978. Soil monument maintenance in the administrative districts of Stuttgart and Tübingen. Gentner, Stuttgart 1979, pp. 66-68.
- Hartmann Reim: Excavations in the Roman estate "Altstadt" near Meßkirch, Sigmaringen district. In: Society for Prehistory and Early History in Württemberg and Hohenzollern eV (Ed.): Archaeological excavations 1977. Soil monument maintenance in the administrative districts of Stuttgart and Tübingen. Gentner, Stuttgart 1978, pp. 51-55.
- Hartmann Reim: Excavations in the Roman estate "Altstadt" near, Sigmaringen district. Archaeological conservation and road construction. In: Preservation of monuments in Baden-Württemberg , 6th year 1977, issue 4, pp. 147–152. ( PDF )
Web links
- Dianatempel Meßkirch on the website of the Swabian Alb Association local group Meßkirch
Coordinates: 47 ° 59 ′ 4 ″ N , 9 ° 3 ′ 15 ″ E