CAMBODUNUM
(Kempten) Bavaria, Germany.
A Raetic provincial town in the foothills of the Alps
at the intersection of important roads leading from Italy
to Augusta Vindelicum and to the Danube. The name
originated as a major place of the Celtic Estioni but
the location of the place (hardly an oppidum) has not
yet been fixed for lack of characteristic finds. During
the first years of the emperor Tiberius (about A.D. 17),
a garrison was stationed on a plain above the banks of the
Iller and a new urban settlement was developed systematically. The first representative buildings were erected under
Claudius ca. A.D. 50. The economy of the town was based
on commerce, agriculture, and cattle-breeding. During the
turmoil of the Three Emperor Year (68-69), the town and
its public buildings were largely destroyed. Reconstruction
was soon started, and the public buildings were rebuilt
on a larger scale. The town contained now a forum
with temple, curia, basilica, and a guest-house, as well
as three public baths, a walled-in area (238 x 178 m)
with an altar for burnt-offerings, and a separated area
with numerous small temples. The forum, of the type
called a temple forum, can be compared with that of
Pompeii, e.g., the basilica is comparable with measurements of 47 x 23.5 m and a middle nave 12.5 m wide.
The large baths with a square ground plan of 75 m
correspond roughly to the Stabiani baths in Pompeii.
Streets at right angles divided the center of the town into
at least a dozen insulae. Stone buildings usually had
porticoes facing the street. To the N, E, and S were
other sections with wooden houses. The town continued
to grow in size although economic development decreased owing to a shift of trade routes after the incorporation of the limes area N of the Danube. In the
second half of the 1st c. A.D. the old necropolis in the
N was abandoned and built over. The town area had
then a N-S extension of 1 km, and a width E-W of 0.5
km. Probably the town was elevated at the end of the
2d c. A.D. to a municipium. After 200 A.D. there existed
for some time a potter's workshop, producing decorated
ceramics and sigillata like the factory in Westerndorf
in the town. Numerous finds of ornaments and other
traces testify to the complete destruction by the Alamanni in 233.
Another catastrophe in 259-260 caused a relocation
of the town to the left bank of the Iller. There, on the
isolated mountain of the Burghalde and behind strong
walls, a smaller town developed. The
Notitia Dignitatum
mentions in Cambodunum a praefectus legionis III
Italicae who commanded that sector of the limes (
Not.
dig. [
occ.] 35). Thus troops were stationed in the late
Roman town; under their protection the settlement must
have continued for some time. That the mediaeval town
Campidona developed there (documented for the first
half of the 8th c.) argues, together with the name, for
the continuity of the settlement. The finds are in the
Allgäuer Heimatmuseum in Kempten and in the Prähistorische Staatssammlung in München.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
F. Wagner, “Die römische Provinzstadt Kempten,”
Allgäuer Geschichtsfreund NF 36
(1934) 65-69
I; W. Krämer,
Cambodunumforschungen
1953 I (1957); U. Fischer,
Cambodunumjorschungerl
1953 II (Ceramics) (1957)
I; H.-J. Kellner, “Der Schatzfund von Cambodunum,”
Germania 38 (1960) 386-92;
W. Kleiss,
Die öffentlichen Bauten von Cambodunum
(1962)
MPI; G. Krahe, “Ausgrabungen im frührömischen Gräberfeld von Cambodunum,”
Jahresber. d. Bayer. Bodendenkmalpflege 3 (1962) 78-91
MPI.
H.-J. KELLNER
