BOUTAE
(Annecy-Les-Fins) Haute-Savoie, France.
A small Allobrogian settlement at the outlet of
an Alpine valley. It developed into a Gallo-Roman vicus
of the city of Vienne under Augustus, when construction
of the route from the Little St. Bernard Pass to Geneva
began (completed under Claudius by a road linking it to
Aix). The center of many industries, Boutae reached its
apogee in the 2d c. Destroyed in the 3d c. by the German
invasions, it recovered somewhat under Constantine but
was conquered by the Burgundians in the 5th c.
At its height, the vicus covered a triangular area of
25 ha, the base of the triangle corresponding to the modern Avenue de Genève. Three cardines running NE-SW
were crossed by the decumani, marking off regular insulae. In the N section of the settlement, where the N
decumanus crossed the W cardo, was the forum, which
was paved, first under Hadrian and twice thereafter, and
surrounded by porticos. Close by on the NE side is a
rectangular building (46 x 22 m) uncovered in 1959-66;
inside it is a peripheral portico 3.7 m wide with a wall
of mortared rubble faced with small blocks; the portico
encloses a hall with a nave (35 x 11 m). A rectangular
room (9 x 6 m) with a tiled floor extends into the axis
of the long N side facing the forum; thls has been ldentified as the curia of the vicani Boutenses (
CIL XII, 2532).
On either side of the curia, in an unusual arrangement,
is a semicircular exedra. The dimensions of the building,
the strength of its foundations, its location on the edge
of the forum, and the absence of domestic pottery all
suggest that it may be the [basi]lica cum p[orticibus] mentioned in an inscription (
CIL XII, 2533), a dedication
dating from the reign of two emperors, perhaps Marcus
Aurelius and Lucius Verus.
In the same N section of the vicus several houses have
been found: the House of the Gold Coins, the House of
the Galleries, the House of the Columns, and the Double
House; farther S are the Hypocaust House and the House
of the Fresco. A number of workshops have also been
located.
To the SE are a temple attributed to Mercury and,
close by it, a little theater, recognized by a fragmentary
inscription (
CIL XII, 2539) and by the discovery of some
curved tiers at the edge of an open area that had sometimes been thought to be a second forum. Several pottery
strata, S of the theater, have yielded quantities of
potsherds from different workshops; this S section of
Boutae seems to have been mainly industrial in character.
A peculiarity of this vicus is that it got its water supply
not from an aqueduct but from wells; some 40 have been
located.
At the W end of the vicus on what is now the Boulevard de Rocade, between the Avenue des Iles and the
Avenue des Romains, is a large inhumation necropolis
that was used in Roman times and again in the Burgundian era.
Terraced on the neighboring hillsides are luxurious villas. A suburb also grew up on the Thiou river around a
port, indicated by the tiles frequently unearthed in the
center of the modern city of Annecy, around the Rue
J. J. Rousseau.
Objects found on the site are housed in the Annecy museum.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
C. Marteaux & M. Le Roux,
Boutae,
vicus gallo-romain de la cité de Vienne (1913); P. Broise,
“Annecy aux temps gallo-romains,”
Annesci 3 (1955)
9-54; id., “Bilan des découvertes archéologiques aux Fins
d'Annecy de 1930 à 1960,”
Actes du 85e congrès national des Sociétés savantes, Chambéry-Annecy, 1960 (1962) 104-9
P; id., “Un gisement de céramique commune aux
Fins d'Annecy,”
Annesci 12 (1965) 89-90; id., “Découverte d'un édifice public sur le site gallo-romain de Boutae,”
Latomus 27 (1968) 33-44.
M. LEGLAY
