VALLATUM
(Manching) Bavaria, Germany.
Station of the High Empire mentioned in the
Antonine
Itinerary as on the road along the Danube to the S, and
in the
Notitia Dignitatum as a Late Empire fort. The
name almost necessitates its location in or near the ring
wall of Manching in the district of Ingolstadt. This wall,
segments of which are still preserved, was over 7 km
long and enclosed an area of 380 ha. These are the
remains of a true murus gallicus, renewed in a second
phase in a prehistoric technique.
Excavations have shown that, except for a strip just
inside the walls, the entire enclosed area was settled. It
was crisscrossed with apparently regular streets, and the
buildings, all of wooden construction, show a certain systematic plan, so the settlement may justly be counted as
one of the oldest examples of town planning N of the
Alps. The inhabitants were Celts, probably Vindelicans,
and the oppidum at Manching may have been their capital. The remains of the buildings and the artifacts indicate a considerable population.
Settlement within the wall began and ended in the
Iron Age. There are indications that the town was taken
and destroyed by the Romans in 15 B.C. The site was
unoccupied for a time, and then a Roman village grew
up inside the wall, on the E-W road which was still in
use. When the defense of the limes collapsed in the mid
3d c. with the invasion of the Alamanni, the fortified
settlement received refugees from the surrounding territory, as is shown by a series of finds such as a large
hoard of silver vessels. After the station was destroyed,
the site again remained unoccupied until a late Roman
border fort was erected in the 4th c. According to the
Notitia Dignitatum, the praefectus of the Lagio III Italia
was stationed here as commander of this section of the
border (pars superior), as was the praefectus of the
Ala secunda Valeria singularis, so the fort can hardly
have been small. Stones from the wall were used in its
construction. When the E gate was excavated, a fibula
with onion-shaped bosses was found which dates from the
time of Valentinian.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
W. Krämer, “Manching, ein vindelikisches Oppidum an der Donau,”
Neue Ausgrabungen
in Deutschland (1958) 175-202; id., “The Oppidum of
Manching,”
Antiquity 34 (1960) 191-200; id.,
Ausgrabungen in einer keltischen Stadt. Das Bild der Wissenschaft. Neue Funde aus alter Zeit (1970) 94-103; id. & F. Schubert, “Die Ausgrabungen in Manching 1955-1961,”
Die Ausgrabungen in Manching I (1970) esp.
48-56 on the
Roman period. H.-J. KELLNER
