Villa Rustica (Rommelshausen)

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Conserved part of the main house
Herringbone brickwork in the basement
Information board about the plant
Layout of the facility

The Villa Rustica near Rommelshausen , a town in Baden-Württemberg that belongs to the municipality of Kernen in the Remstal , is an extensive, archaeologically excavated Roman estate from the 2nd century AD. It is located north directly below the mountain Kernen, which was called Beiburg until the 19th century. After the excavation, part of the house was preserved and made accessible as an open-air museum . In particular, the excellently preserved cellar made the complex famous.

The Villa Rustica von Rommelshausen belonged to wealthy landowners and is one of several hundred well-known manors from the Roman era in Baden-Württemberg.

Location and research history

The facility is located 0.5 kilometers south of the village on the “Mäurech” river in an agricultural area. As the name of the win suggests, the knowledge of the existence of a once populated place was probably never completely lost, especially since reading findings were made before the scientific investigation. In 1932 the site was included in Oscar Paret 's standard work on the Roman settlement of Württemberg. Paret already expressed the assumption that it could be a villa rustica , and in this context also referred to an older legend, according to which a homestead and a church tower should have been at this point. In 1971, in an excavation campaign lasting several months, the estate was partially exposed under the direction of Wolf-Dieter Forster and Michael-Adolf Petrol . Subsequently, part of the foundations of the house was preserved and partially reconstructed. An information board was set up next to the remains of the cellar made of reed sandstone blocks and a heated risalite . The facility is freely accessible, but cannot be described as barrier-free.

Building history

The Villa Rustica near Rommelshausen consisted of a 21 × 12 meter main building made of exemplary set of ashlar masonry, with its front facing southeast, as well as several auxiliary buildings, one of which was outside the surrounding wall. This enclosure wall enclosed a rectangle 95 meters long and 72 meters wide, around 0.75 hectares. The main building, located roughly in the middle of the property, belonged to a less representative building type of Roman villas and was divided into five rooms. To the southeast, the suite consisted of a rectangular entrance area with a basement, which was flanked on the left and right by an almost square room. Behind this, in the northwest, there was a rectangular room referred to as a work area, which was followed by an almost square room in the southeast. The two square rooms on the front side of the house will have had at least one story in the rising masonry. The room in the south-western corner building was the only one in the house to be hypocausted and heated from an adjacent work room. There was also the well-preserved basement ramp from the excavation, which led down at right angles. The basement, whose threshold was still preserved, had two semicircular storage niches and two windows on its southeast wall. The excavators suspect that there were other residential and commercial buildings on the site. The rectangular outbuildings were located on the northwest, northeast and southeast corners of the enclosing wall.

The villa rustica was inhabited for several generations and was probably destroyed in the middle of the 3rd century during the Alemanni invasions . Due to the sparse finds, it can be assumed that a short time after the Limes fall (259/260 AD), early Alemanni settled next to the site of the villa, which had already been destroyed. For example, post pits and Alemannic settlement ceramics were found outside the Roman enclosing wall.

Findings and finds

During the excavations in 1971 it was found that the ashlar masonry was grouted in white. In addition, numerous finds from everyday life emerged from the ground. It is worth mentioning the fittings of an old, presumably wooden chest, vessels made of glass and raw pieces of bone hairpins. A small three-layer comb decorated with circular eyes came to light on the ramp of the main house leading into the basement. In connection with the Alemannic finds, Dieter Planck mentioned a fragment of the edge of a bowl that had an inwardly bevelled edge. A C1 primer also became known . In the basement, the archaeologists were able to make out six round recesses in the ground. There were marks left by amphorae that were once stored there.

Others

The Villa Rustica near Rommelshausen hit the headlines in the summer of 2007 after Yvan Schneider was killed by his peers in the immediate vicinity of the excavation. Today a memorial from Pope Benedict XVI. blessed wooden cross to the murder victim.

literature

  • Wolf-Dieter Forster: Rommelshausen's Roman legacy. Excavations and finds in the Mäurech corridor in words and pictures . Druckhaus, Waiblingen o. J.
  • Dieter Planck : Kernen-Rommelshausen. Roman manor . In: Ders .: The Romans in Baden-Württemberg . Theiss, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-8062-1555-3 , pp. 144f.
  • Dieter Planck: Rommelshausen. Roman manor . In: Sölter: The Roman Germania from the air . Gustaf Lübbe Verlag, 2nd edition. Bergisch Gladbach 1983, ISBN 3-7857-0298-1 , p. 120.
  • Hartwig Zürn: Villa rustica in the “Mäurech” corridor . In: Find reports from Baden-Württemberg Volume 2 . Schweizerbart'sche publishing bookstore. Stuttgart 1975, p. 193 ff. With ill. 117.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Oscar Paret: The settlements of the Roman Württemberg . (= Friedrich Hertlein , Oscar Paret and Peter Goessler : The Romans in Württemberg . Part 3.) Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1932, p. 365.
  2. ↑ a b c Dieter Planck: Rommelshausen. Roman manor . In: Sölter: The Roman Germania from the air . Gustaf Lübbe Verlag, 2nd edition. Bergisch Gladbach 1983, ISBN 3-7857-0298-1 , p. 120.
  3. ↑ Martin Luik , Helga Schach-Dörges: Roman and early Halamannic finds from Beinstein, Gde Waiblingen, Rems-Murr-Kreis. In: Find reports from Baden-Württemberg 18 . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1993. p. 407.
  4. ^ Festschrift for Philipp Filtzinger . Schweizerbart'sche publishing bookstore. Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3510491211 , p. 696.
  5. ^ Wilhelm Schneider: Work on the Alemannic Early History, Volume 11 . Self-published by Wilhelm Schneider, 1975, p. 34.
  6. ^ Find reports from Baden-Württemberg, Volume 8 , E. Schweizerbart'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart 1983, p. 406.
  7. ^ Dieter Planck: Rommelshausen, Villa Rustica . In: Filtzinger, Planck, Cämmerer: The Romans in Baden-Württemberg . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3806202877 , pp. 131-132.
  8. ↑ http://www.yvanschneider.de/210808_wkz.pdf

Coordinates: 48 ° 47 ′ 57.56 "  N , 9 ° 19 ′ 20.64"  E