PISTIS
(Pitres) Dept. Eure, France.
Situated
on the right bank of the Seine where it joins the Andelle, 22 km from Rouen, Pistis was a fairly important settlement from Gallo-Roman times up to the early Middle Ages.
Excavations in 1854 revealed extensive buildings
which some thought were a palace of Charles the Bald
(823-77). Later digs in 1899 showed that in fact they
belonged to a large Gallo-Roman villa consisting of
several rooms. Among these were a caldarium with a
hypocaust beneath, circular (9 m in diameter) and with
four apses, and to the N a large rectangular room
12 x 9.50 m. Against its E wall is a third room of the
same size, which has a paved floor and two semicircular
structures at each end. Small baths were excavated at
the place called La Salle, and at Catelier the ruins of a
theater, whose greater axis measures 85 m, were found.
All these monuments were buried again. In contrast,
an underground aedicula is still standing, down eight
steps at the place known as Pierre St-Martin. This is a
nearly square building, 2.70 x 3 m; three niches are
hollowed out of the walls. In the course of different excavations many potsherds of la Graufesenque and Lezoux sigillate pottery (1st and 2d c.) were found, also fibulae, among them some enameled ones of the 3d c.
During the later excavations a circular Gallic hut was
found at a depth of 2 m.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Leon Coutil, “Les fouilles de Pitres
(Eure),”
Bull. Arch. (1901) 201-15, 434-56.
M. A. DOLLEUS
