A New Late Antique Fortified Settlement in Northeastern Gaul: Decem Pagi—Tarquimpol (Moselle). First Synthesis of Archaeological Investigations, 2007–2012

Archaeologists of Goethe Universität Frankfurt and Harvard University investigated the Roman settlement of Decem Pagi (Tarquimpol, Moselle, France), known mainly from Ammianus Marcellinus and the Itineraria, and its late antique fortification. They uncovered a sequence of flourishing settlement, apparent abandonment, and surprising refoundation in Late Antiquity. Occupation antedated the Roman conquest (ceramic, coin, 14C dating). Fourteen sounding trenches and geomagnetic, aerial, GPR, and walking surveys identified impressive early imperial monuments (colonnaded portico, large fanum); they offer a context for the theater observed in 1981, and earlier finds. Decem Pagi now emerges as the religious center of the Saulnois, Metz's salt-producing hinterland, down to its destruction dated by ceramic around the mid-third century. Most surprising was the settlement's late antique refoundation after apparent abandonment. At the Roman crossroads, the settlement's highest point was fortified by a massive late antique clay and stone spolia-faced wall faced and preceded by a double V ditch. A dark earth layer shows at least two phases from ca. 350 to some-time before ca. 450, dated by Argonne and other ceramic, coins, and 14C. It displays craft production and postholes from structures whose regular spatial layout suggests a street plan. Excepting Merovingian-era sarcophagi excavated in the Romanesque parish church in the nineteenth c., there are almost no signs of early medieval occupation, notwithstanding substantial Merovingian activities at neighboring sites along the Seille River.