GIAT ET VOINGT
Puy-de-Dôme, France.
A
Gallo-Roman site (ruins of the Puys de Voingt, also
known as the Beauclair ruins) on the Roman road from
Lyon to Saintes, 45 km W of Clermont-Ferrand. The site
was occupied at least from the beginning of Roman domination to the end of the 4th c. A.D.
The chief monument is a temple set on a hill with a
spring close by. It is of the fanum type, with a cella
12 m square, the walls of which still bear traces of paintings at the bottom. The cella is surrounded by a gallery,
which is backed to the S and W by solid walls and on
the other two sides by a wooden colonnade. The temple
facade faced NE. Remains of an earlier temple with the
same orientation have been found under the cella.
Next to the temple were some outlying buildings; to
the N was a large adjoining room again with traces of
paintings on its walls, while a wall to the E may be the
remains of a surrounding wall.
Excavations on the remainder of the site, which covers ca. 28 ha, have revealed the foundations of huts,
shops built of light materials, and forges and workshops
belonging to craftsmen (especially bronze-founders)
whose work may have been connected with the sanctuary.
A few larger structures were apparently farm buildings.
Traces of a water supply system have been uncovered:
an ancient water-catchment connected to a spring and
the remains of a small aqueduct. E of these buildings
were two necropoleis, largely despoiled in the 19th c.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. Tardieu & F. Boyer,
La ville gallo-romaine de Beauclair (1882)
MPI; G. Charbonneau, “Les
ruines gallo-romaines des Puys de Voingt,”
Gallia 15
(1957) 117-28
M; id., “Nouvelles fouilles aux Puys de
Voingt,” ibid. 19 (1961) 226-31; Grenier,
Manuel IV:2,
594-98.
J. C. POURSAT
