TERVANNA
(Therouanne) Pas-de-Calais, France.
A village on the Lys, in the canton of Aire and
the Saint-Omer arrondissement. The massive remains of
ramparts still mark the area of the Old City, now reverted to fields, but the mediaeval town covers the remains of the chief city of the Civitas Morinorum. This Belgic people, whom Caesar mentioned as few in number
and whose fate is often linked with that of the Menapii,
seems to have settled on the wooded plateaus between
the Canche and the Aa rivers after a long exile beyond
the Rhine and the Meuse, but no indication of Gallic
occupation has come to light at Thérouanne itself.
Excavation down to the virgin soil has made possible
a chronology of ancient Tervanna. At the beginning of
the 1st c. A.D. the island of Lys with the Arras road running across it had modest dwellings on the S slope. Not
until the end of the 1st and beginning of the 2d c. was
there denser settlement, but no evidence of any city plan.
The town was probably destroyed in A.D. 160-170; and
some traces of reconstruction have been found at the
site of the cathedral, carried out before the devastations
of the late 3d c.
Four necropoleis suggest the limits of the inhabited
area from the 1st to the mid 3d c. A.D. The necropolis
of Mont Saint Martin, bordering the road from Thérouanne to Cassel to the NE, for the most part contains
incineration tombs. In the area known as Le Bois Brichet,
to the N along the Boulogne road, is a large necropolis
which yielded rich grave gifts, and a third on the Arras
road to the S was used until the Merovingian period.
Finally, a few inhumation tombs have been found in the
Old City on the Late Empire site. None of the necropoleis has been thoroughly excavated.
The few houses identified were separate, rebuilt several
times in a modest style, and all destroyed during the
invasions of the late 2d and 3d c. A.D. A few carved
blocks may suggest the presence of a monumental complex, but the impression remains that Thérouanne was
probably never more than a small country town. The
same uncertainty persists in the case of the Late Empire
rampart. A large section of wall has been unearthed below the Gothic cathedral, but there is some disagreement about what it represents.
The few inscriptions found have not clarified the history and origins of the city: the mention of Colonia Morinorum probably does not indicate a military colony or even an honorary one, but only a prestigious title.
The discovery of a bronze votive hand may be evidence
of worship of the Oriental god Sabazius.
The earlier finds are in museums at Lille, Calais, and
Arras; the more recent ones are in the Saint Omer
museum.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Heron de Villefosse, “Inscriptions mentionnant la civitas Morinorum,”
BAntFr (1899) 383; C.
Enlart,
Villes mortes du Moyen Age (1920); H. Bernard,
“La reprise des fouilles de Thérouanne,”
Revue du Nord 44 (1962) 339-56
PI; R. Delmaire, “Les fouilles archéologiques de Thérouanne,”
Bull. Soc. des Antiquaires de Morinie 20 (1965) 385-95
P; id., “Céramique sigillée découverte à Thérouanne,”
Revue du Nord 47 (1965)
607-13; id. & Y. Delmaire, “Découvertes archéologiques
à Thérouanne,” ibid. 51 (1969) 353-62; id., “Etude
archéologique de la partie orientale de la civitas Morinorum” (1972 unpubl.); L. Thery, unpubl. ms,
Archives departementales du Pas-de-Calais. P. LEMAN
