FURFOOZ
Belgium.
The rocky massif of
Hauterecenne at Furfooz dominates the Lesse river. In
it are numerous caves that were inhabited in the Paleolithic age and served as burial grottos in the Neolithic
era. In the second half of the 1st c. A.D. some small baths
(15 x 5 m) were built on the mountain slopes, not far
from the summit. They consist of a caldarium with
hypocaust beneath, a rectangular pool, an apsidal sudarium, and a frigidarium with a semicircular pool.
Built far away from any settlement, these baths probably
had a religious purpose (lustration?) and some connection with the cult of springs. They were restored
around 1957. In the 4th c. the summit of the Hauterecenne massif was made into a fortified keep: earthworks
were formed and two walls built to block access to the
fort. The few remains found in the redoubt seem to
show that it was occupied mostly in the second half of
the 4th c. and at the beginning of the 5th. The garrison
that occupied it was made up of German soldiers in
the service of Rome (probably Laeti), whose tombs
have been found. Despite the fact that the baths were
still working well when they arrived there, the soldiers
destroyed the building to build a few huts at the foot of
the rocks, along the banks of the Lasse, and to make a
necropolis in the ruins of the baths. Apart from two
cremation burials, these are inhumation tombs: the
bodies lie between the short hypocaust piers, generally
in a N-S orientation (although some tombs face E-W).
In one instance, the skull of the deceased, severed from
the body, had been placed between the feet. The rich
grave gifts found inside the tombs included pottery of
the 4th c., glassware, bone combs, an occasional bronze
basin, and a wooden bucket with a bronze handle. The
military character of these tombs is illustrated particularly by the inclusion of swordbelts with buckles, frogs,
and applied ornaments decorated in champlevé enamel
(Kerbschnitt), with geometric and animal motifs. Unlike the regular army's dead (as, for example, in the
Oudenburg necropolis), the dead of the German auxiliaries of Furfooz were buried with their arms: arrowheads, spearheads, battle-axes, knives. The necropous of Furfooz has proved of major importance in the
study of the civilization of the transition period between
antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. Bequet, “La forteresse de Furfootz,”
Annales de la Soc. arch. de Namur 14 (1877) 399-417;
R. De Maeyer,
De Oberblijfselen der Romeinsche Villa's
in België (1940) 252; J. Nenquin, “La nécropole de Furfooz,”
Diss. Arch. Gandenses I (1953)
MPI; J. Breuer &
H. Roosens, “La cimetière franc de Haillot,”
Annales de
la Soc. arch. de Namur 48 (1956) 171-376 (see especially the supplement by J. Werner); K. Böhner, “Zur historischen Interpretation der sogenannten Laetengräber,”
Jahrbuch d. Römisch-German. Zentralmuseums Mainz
10 (1963) 139-67; S. J. De Laet, “Note sur les thermes
romains de Furfooz,”
Helinium 7 (1967) 144-49; A.
Dasnoy, “La nécropole de Furfooz,”
Annales de la Soc.
arch. de Namur 55 (1969) 121-94.
S. J. DE LAET
