Le site funéraire antique du 33, rue du Rio à Saint-Marcel/Argentomagus (Indre)

Abstract

Carried out in 2006, the excavation of 33, rue du Rio in Saint-Marcel/Argentomagus (Indre) identified several series of quadrangular ditched enclosures, oriented along the cardinal points. The overlaps are frequent and difficult to discern. The most complete plans are close to square or rectangular and delimit surfaces of 3.7 to 14.4 m2. The irregular excavations are shallow and reveal, in a carbonaceous sediment, mostly burnt material attributable to the first half of the 1st century AD (ceramics, glass, small items of furniture, etc.) (ceramics, glass, small furniture, human and animal bones, carporest). In the absence of a grave in the centre, the nature of the residues collected suggests that these were pyre enclosures. Their spatial organisation suggests that these enclosures were part of plots whose orientations and boundaries may have varied somewhat. Nearby, or intersecting their lines, there are eight burials of infants and one of a child under ten years old. Two ossuary cremation deposits, one adult and one immature individual, are identified at either end of the right-of-way, near what appears to be a circulation space. In terms of the material, enclosures, cremation deposits and burials are contemporary and similar to those found in the Ripottes necropolis, 50m to the south. The abandonment of this burial space after the middle of the 1st century is probably related to the development of the agglomeration outside the limits of the ancient oppidum and the construction of the amphitheatre 50 m to the west.

Keywords

• funerary complex
• quadrangular pyre enclosures
• cremations
• immature burials
• 1st century AD. (Early Roman)
• ceramics