CRUCINIACUM
(Bad Kreuznach) Rhineland Palatinate, Germany.
A Roman vicus on the Nahe,
a tributary of the Rhine, 13 km S of Bingen. The oldest
remains date from a settlement of the Late Stone Age,
and there are finds from the Bronze and Iron Ages.
The vicus was probably on the site of a Celtic settlement. There was a wooden bridge over the Nahe at the
junction of the ancient routes from Bingerbriick, Trier,
Mainz, and Alzey. A Frankish palace is first mentioned
in the 9th c.
The Roman vicus, obviously a crossroads settlement
during the Age of Augustus, lay to the E of the present
town. Lead curse tablets found in tombs (today in the
museums of Bonn and Worms) record more than 70
inhabitants of the settlement during the last quarter of
the 1st c. A.D. The settlement was destroyed ca. 270,
rebuilt during the Constantinian epoch, and finally razed
in the middle of the 4th c. About 370 a fortification was
built by Valentinian I. Only part of the E front (2 m
thick) remains, the so-called Heidenmauer. The continual use of the necropolis to the SE of the fortification
from the Late Iron Age to the era of the Franks, is attested by ca. 1800 Roman graves with burial urns, 70
Late Roman inhumation graves, 450 tombs without contents, and 270 Franconian tombs with grave goods. A
second Franconian necropolis is on the bank of the
Nahe; a third is near a Roman villa on the road to
Hiiffelsheim. In the villa, not yet fully excavated, was
a gladiator mosaic, now in Bad Kreuznach Museum.
Another mosaic, uncovered in 1966, shows a seascape
with the bust of Oceanus.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
O. Kohl,
Programm des königlichen
Gymnasiums zu Kreuznach: Die römischen Inschriften
und Steinskulpturen der Stadt Kreuznach (1880); W.
Zimmermana,
Die Kunstdenkmäler des Kreises Kreuznach
(1935) 56-107; K. Parlasca,
Die römischen Mosaiken in
Deutschland (1959) 88-89; O. Guthmann,
Kreuznach
und Umgebung in römischer Zeit (1969); B. Stümpel,
Mainzer Zeitschrift 63-64 (1968-69) 196-98;
Führer zu
vor- und frühgeschichtlichen Denkmälern 12 (1969)
MI.
H. BULLINGER
