An distinctive mausoleum modeled on the monumental tomb of Augustus in Rome has been unearthed in Saint-Romain-en-Gal, close to Lyon. The construction is the one one of many 18 tumulus-style mausoleums present in France that’s well-preserved sufficient to substantiate that it was round in design, like Augustus’ tomb.
Constructed round 50 AD, with an inside diameter of 15 m [50 feet], it needed to be greater than 6 m [20 feet] excessive to be seen to all these passing via or arriving within the Roman colony of Vienne, significantly from the Rhône River.
This reveals the significance of the particular person whose burial place it was, “who, even in loss of life, should nonetheless have been current on this planet of the dwelling. Most definitely an individual belonging to the aristocratic elite, with an essential political function and linked to imperial energy,” explains Giulia Ciucci, archaeologist and scientific director of the [Gallo-Roman Museum’s] archaeological websites. The mausoleum of Saint-Romain-en-Gal was the truth is constructed on the mannequin of that of Augustus in Rome (27 BC-14 AD), the primary Roman emperor.
The Roman metropolis of Vienne (Colonia Julia Viennensis) was based in 47 B.C. by Julius Caesar, changing the Gallic oppidum right into a colony for the veterans who had conquered Gaul. It was one of many earliest cities to combine Roman navy retirees and Gallic elites, and have become an early instance of the Romanization of Gaul. It coated an space that as we speak includes three adjoining cities — Vienne, Sainte-Colombe and Saint-Romainen-Gal — however all the stays of the Roman metropolis’s main constructions, together with the temple of Augustus and Livia, the odeon, the circus, public baths and the theater, are within the fashionable metropolis of Vienne. Saint-Romain-en-Gal had no stays of monumental public buildings, and it wasn’t till the the nineteenth century that nice mosaic flooring emerged.
The world the place the tomb was discovered was being excavated as a result of the distinctive Rustic Calendar Mosaic, now on completely show on the Gallo-Roman Museum, was found there in 1891. The mosaic is likely one of the largest and most full depictions of agricultural labor to have survived from historic Rome. Solely two different large-scale agricultural calendar mosaics corresponding to this one are recognized, one in El-Jem, Tunisia, the opposite in Zliten, Libya, and the Saint-Romain-en-Gal mosaic has the best variety of surviving panels.
Twenty-seven of the unique 40 figural panels stay, organized in a grid-like association inside outer borders of black and white tiles, plant arabesques and guilloche knots outlining every of the panels. They’re centered round 4 panels representing the seasons, with the agricultural actions grouped across the panel of the season by which they happen. This advanced masterpiece adorned the ground of an expensive domus constructed on the banks of the Rhone within the first quarter of the third century.
The purpose of this summer season’s excavation was to uncover extra of the mosaic’s authentic context which had by no means been documented with fashionable archaeological strategies and know-how. A crew {of professional} archaeologists and college students dug take a look at pits and investigated the realm in public view. They discovered the foundations of a nineteenth century home constructed on high of the semi-circular cells that surrounded the central burial chamber.
This summer season’s excavation ended earlier than the burial chamber was excavated. Work will resume subsequent summer season, and archaeologists hope they’ll discover references to the eminent personage who had the wealth and political energy to emulate the emperor himself in his funerary grandeur.
