CORIOVALLUM
(Heerlen) S Limburg, Netherlands.
Cortovallio in the
Peutinger Table, Coriovallo
in the
Antonine Itinerary (375.7; 478.6). The town
lay at the crossing of two Roman roads: Cologne to
Boulogne, and Xanten to Trèves via Heerlen and Aix-la-Chapelle. Scores of pottery kilns have been found, indicating that it was a center of the coarse-ware industry,
and some of the inhabitants must have been wealthy,
judging by the contents of graves discovered here. Excavations have revealed the remains of a bath (ca. 40 x
50 m), several houses, Roman roads, and the ditches of
a late Roman fort.
The bath was built ca. A.D. 50 and altered in the 3d c.,
probably because the heating system did not function
properly. An inscription discovered on the site, attests
a restoration ca. A.D. 250 by M. Sattonius lucundus (cf.
CIL VIII, 2634), a decurio of Colonia Ulpia Traiana
(Xanten). In the first half of the 4th c. the bath was at
least partly destroyed, and the site was incorporated into
the fort by shifting the ditch to the N. The fort lasted
until the beginning of the 5th c.; coins and pottery of the
4th c. have often been found. The older finds are in the
Leiden and Maastricht museums, the newer ones in the
municipal museum at Heerlen.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A. W. Byvanck,
Excerpta Romana II
(1935) 85-87; III (1947) 27-36; A. E. van Giffen, “Thermen en castella te Heerlen,”
AntCl 17 (1948) 199-236
MPI; W. Glasbergen, “Terra sigillata uit de Thermenopgraving te Heerlen-Coriovallum,” ibid. 237-62
I; J. E.
Bogaers, “Heerlen, een bouwfragment met de naam van
Marcus Sattonius Iucundus,”
Niewsbull. Kon. Ned. Oud.
Bond (1957) 133-38; id., “Militaire en burgerlijke nederzettingen in Romeins Nederland (Honderd eeuwen Nederland),”
Antiquity and Survival II (1959) 157-59.
B. H. STOLTE
