SCARPONNA
or Scarpona, Dieulouard, Meurthe-et-Moselle, France.
Mentioned in the
Antonine Itinerary and the
Peutinger Table, Scarponna was a way station along the great road from Langres to Trier. It
stands at a crossing of the Moselle, which seems to have
been the boundary between the territories of the Leuci
and the Mediomatrici. The only historical reference to
Scarponna is by Ammianus Marcellinus (27.2), who recounts that Jovinus, the emperor Valentinian's magister
equitum, exterminated two bands of Alemanni there in
367. The vicus was occupied continuously from the 1st c.
A.D. to Carolingian times, most intensely in the 1st and
4th c. Recent salvage excavations (1969-70), necessitated
by large public works projects, have shown that from the
1st to the 3d c. residential houses were arranged along
the Roman road. Remains of a bridge crossing an old
channel of the Moselle were found as well as, nearby,
two milestones, one (incomplete) bearing the name of
the emperor Hadrian, the other (complete) with the name
of Postumus and the distance (XIII leugae) from Scarponna to Metz. In the 4th c. Scarponna served as a defensive bridgehead against barbarian invasions. A castellum was built on both sides of the great road and the
course of the Moselle was changed to serve as a moat for
the fort, which became an island. In 1970 at the bottom
of the branch of the Moselle which runs along the W side
of the castellum, remains were found of a first phase of
the fortifications. These had been hastily built with reused
materials—in particular funerary stelae. The walls had
tipped into the river, undoubtedly after a particularly violent Moselle flood. A second wall, built farther back than
the first, is still partly visible today, as well as the abutment of a bridge and an old embankment. Other parts of
the same fortification, with remains of towers, can be
seen in gardens and house cellars. The total area of the
fort, which was trapezoidal in shape, was ca. 1.3 ha.
An inhumation necropolis dating to the 4th c. was
recently excavated SW of the castellum. (It replaced a 1st
and 2d c. cremation cemetery of which only a few funerary urns survive.) The bodies are variously orientated;
sometimes they are surrounded by a row of unworked
stones; sometimes they are enclosed in sarcophagus-boxes
made of tiles set together in different ways. A large and
very well-preserved assemblage of grave-goods was collected, including glass and ceramic vases and ornaments
(bronze bracelets, rings, necklaces, charms). The many
finds collected during the recent salvage excavations are
kept in a small storage-depot at Dieulouard: common
iron and bronze artifacts, abundant 1st to 4th c. pottery,
weights, glass vases, fibulae, coins, as well as several
stelae of the house type. The Musée Lorrain at Nancy
has most of the lapidary artifacts from chance discoveries or old excavations: a milestone in honor of the
emperor Caracalla found in 1778, gravestones with
sculptured reliefs and inscriptions (including several stelae of the house type), a basin of a fountain with an
inscription, an altar dedicated to Mercury, a group
sculpture representing ironsmiths at work.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lamoureux, “Notice de la ville et du
comté de Scarpone” (an extract from “Mémoires du P. Le Bonnetier, dernier curé et prieur de Scarpone”), in
Mém. de la Soc. royale des Antiquaires de France (1829)
VIII 172-215; (1834) x 55-100 (the MS memoirs of P.
La Bennetier are in the Bibliothèque municipale de Nancy); M. Toussaint, “Scarponne au temps de la Gaule
romains,” in
Pays Lorrain (1938) 529-50
PI; id.,
Répertoire archéologique Meurthe-et-Moselle (1947) 24-41; R. Billoret in
Gallia 26 (1968), 28 (1970)
PI.
R. BILLORET
