TERICIA
(Mouriès) Bouches-du-Rhône, France.
Gallo-Greek oppidum of Salyens (les Caisses de
Servane) on a rocky spur of the Alpilles chain, 3 km
NE of Mouriès (Tericiae in the
Peutinger Table). Excavations in 1939 and 1942 uncovered house walls of rough stones, and a large wall in which were found reused piers and lintels of limestone decorated with
friezes of men on horseback and heads of horses, carved
in an archaic style, the remains of a Celto-Ligurian cultural center (in the Museum of St-Rémy-de-Provence). Gallic silver and bronze coins and pottery from Iron Age II were also found.
A crematorium at the SE foot of the oppidum was
excavated in the 19th c. Some of the finds are in the
Musée de Saint Germain en Laye: an anthropoid dagger,
a lance head, an iron knife and boss of a shield, two
bronze kyathoi, crematory urns, and Campanian plates.
In the Château of Servane near Mouriès are preserved
some iron knives, vases for liquids, and Campanian
bowls, as well as two lions of local limestone and a
head of Hercules wearing a lion skin (a theater mask).
To the S, lower than the oppidum, are the ruins of a
Roman villa containing marble columns, fragments of
tiles, amphorae, dolia, various vases, and imperial coins.
The settlement was destroyed by the Visigoths at the
end of the 5th c.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
L. Rochetin, “Tericiae, une des stations
de la voie Aurélienne,”
Mémoires de l'Académie de Vaucluse (1895); P. de Brun, “Le cimetière gallo-grec de Servane, près de Mouriès,”
Provincia 13 (1933)
I; F.
Benoit,
Des chevaux de Mouriès aux chevaux de Roquepertuse (1948)
MPI; id.,
L'art primitif méditerranéen de
la vallée du Rhône (1955)
I; M. Pezet,
Sur les traces d'Hercule (1962)
MPI.
A. DUMOULIN
