GANDA
(Ghent) Belgium.
A Gallo-Roman
vicus of the city of the Menapii, at the confluence of the
Lys and the Escaut. Nothing was known of it until excavations were started in 1960. The name, appearing
only in mediaeval sources, is pre-Roman and means
“meeting of rivers.” On the site of the vicus a settlement
with necropolis was found, dating from the Late Bronze
and Early Iron Age (from the end of Ha A to the end
of Ha D), but so far no remains have been discovered of
an Iron Age settlement that would have preceded the
Gallo-Roman vicus. The beginnings of the vicus go
back to the mid 1st c. A.D. The settlement spread out
for 2 km on a narrow strip of land surrounded by
marshes on the left bank of the Escaut: to the W, from
the point where the two rivers meet; to the E, up to
the modern village of Destelbergen. At the W end of
the vicus, in the ruins of the mediaeval abbey of St.
Bavon, great quantities of Roman pottery were found
ca. 1930, but thorough excavations have taken place
only at the E end of the settlement. Isolated finds were
made in between these two spots. The excavations, which
were carried out at the edge of present-day Ghent, revealed that the part of the vicus studied was half rural
in character (with orchards, meadows, and paddocks
for cattle, but no fields) and half industrial (with significant traces of iron-smelting works, limonite from nearby
boglands being used for ore). No fewer than ten
wells, with wooden linings, were found; most probably
they were related to the iron-smelting operation. To
the SE of the vicus a large necropolis was found with
from 1000 to 2000 tombs, most of them from the 3d c.
Among these tombs, which are of the incineration-pit
type, is one that is unique in the archaeology of the NW
provinces of the Roman Empire. This is a collective
tomb (13.3 x 1.4 m) in which were found the charred
bones of about twenty deceased—men, women, and children. The rich grave gifts, placed on the pyre along
with the bodies, had been severely damaged. Among the
objects were sherds of 700 to 800 pottery vases, 25
coins, about 50 fibulas (some 20 of them enameled), a
perfume flask of bronze, rings, hairpins, glass and bone
articles. The tomb is generally taken as evidence that
an epidemic raged through the vicus, in the course of
which a large number of its inhabitants perished.
Ganda was linked to Bavai by a road that passed
through the vici of Velzeke and Blicquy. Other roads
probably connected it to the settlements of Aardenburg
to the XV and Hofstade and Asse to the E. The vicus
was certainly still inhabited in the 4th c. There is some
evidence, from topography and the study of local place
names, that there was a castellum at Ganda in the 4th
c.; its site has not yet been definitely located.
In the 7th c. a Merovingian settlement took the place
of the Gallo-Roman vicus; its inhabitants were evangelized by St. Amand, who built an abbey there (later
dedicated to St. Bavon). By the 8th and 9th c. the town
had become a port of some economic importance, but
was completely destroyed at the time of the Viking
invasions in the 9th c. When the Vikings left, another
port which developed farther W, between the Lys and
the Escaut, kept the name of the old vicus. Ghent (Fr.
Gand) became one of the leading cities of the Middle
Ages, although the site of the original vicus had become
by then completely rural.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
S. J. De Laet, “Oudheidkundige vondsten en opgravingen in Oostvlaanderen,”
Kultureel Jaarboek voor de Provincie Oostvlaanderen 12, 1958 (1961)
38-52; 17, 1963 (1964) 27-71; 19, 1965 (1967) 10-31,
129-70; id., “Les fouilles de Destelbergen et les origines
gallo-romaines de la yule de Gand,”
Archeologia 30
(1969) 57-69
MPI; id. & A. Van Doorselaer, “Lokale
ijzerwinning in westelijk Belgiï in de Romeinse tijd,”
Mededelingen van de Kon. Vlaamse Academie v. Wetenschappen v. België, Klasse der Letteren 31.2 (1969)
73 pp.; id. et al., “La tombe collective de la nécropole
gallo-romaine de Destelbergen-lez-Gand,”
Helinium 10
(1970).
S. J. DE LAET
