MONTCARET
Dordogne, France.
A villa
excavated from 1921 to 1968, with several interruptions.
The work area lies limited to a large, wealthy residential
section beneath a modern road and the village church, so
that only one large complex (79 x 56 m) has been excavated. North of the church is a huge room (17.75 x 16.12 m) connected by a bay to the S with a semi-circular apse 9.95 m wide and 5.64 m deep. The floor
of this room was covered with a rich geometric mosaic.
Heat was distributed through a bellows-chamber system probably unique in Gaul. At the N end of the room
was a peristyle. To the W two doorways opened into
a rectangular room with a slightly arched apsidiole on
either side; the floor was covered with a mosaic with
a design of crescent-shaped shields. All these rooms
were encircled by gutters 0.36 m wide. A circular wall
(perhaps part of a reservoir) is half-embedded under the
road NW of the large room.
To N and S of the church and partly covered by it
two galleries can be seen. They lead from the first set of
rooms to another complex behind the apse. The first
room is rectangular, well bonded and with iron joints;
it is surrounded by other remodeled rooms. Among these
can be seen traces of a hypocaust and a pool, the bottom of which is covered with a mosaic (intact) decorated with panels of octopi, fish, and shells, separated by cable molding. The facing of the upper part of the
walls is of marble and paint, that below water level of
small squares of terracotta; the water was drained off
in lead pipes.
All these buildings were constructed in the 1st c., rebuilt after the first invasion of 276, and again after the
great 5th c. invasions. The principal room of what must
have been one of the great villas of Aquitania was used
at that time as a basilica, with the vestibule as the
narthex. Countless Merovingian tombs have been discovered in the floor and walls, and the place has never ceased to be a center of worship.
The finds—fragments of architecture and sculpture,
stuccos, and painted wall coatings, ancient and Merovingian pottery, glass, coins, and an enameled crucifix (with the Byzantine inscription IC.XC.NHK.A.)—are housed in the Musée P. Tauziac at Montcaret.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
J. Formigeé, “Fouilles de Montcaret de
1921 à 1938,”
Congrès Archéologique de France en 1939 (1941) 182-95; J. Coupry, “Informations archéologiques,”
Gallia 25, 2 (1967) 350-53
I.
A. BLONDY
