Villa des Tuillières
Location
Garden
Villa des Tuillières
Keywords
Garden Description
The villa des Tuillières near Selongey was on a Roman road connecting Lyon and Trier. The villa was detected by aerial photography in 1973 and almost completely excavated by the private Association Archéologique de Fontaine-Française in advance of the construction of the motorway A 26/31 Langres – Dijon between 1976 and 1988.
At Selongey, the first Roman evidence was a timber-framed building with clay walls. It can be dated to Claudian or Neronian times. The construction type of this 'proto-villa' continued well-known Late Celtic traditions. Some small, typical Roman stone buildings were erected during Flavian times. In the second century AD, under Hadrian or Antoninus, these first structures were razed to the ground and the complex was re-organized by the construction of a small main building and a huge isolated building for agricultural purposes. The huge stone-built villa complex, with its strict axial arrangement of all buildings around a central courtyard of 1.5 hectares, was constructed at the beginning of the third century AD under the reign of Severus.
During the first half of the 3rd century AD the complex of the villa comprised several buildings, which were arranged around a central courtyard (Fig. 1). The north-western wing of the villa complex was formed by the main building (Fig. 1, B) and the thermae in its classical form (Fig. 1, C) while buildings for agriculture (Fig. 1, A and D) and Iron working activities (Fig. 1, E) were arranged at the other sides of the courtyard. The main part of the villa opened with a long porticus south-east to the courtyard (Fig. 1, B No. 5). At both ends of the porticus small pavilions formed the angles of the main building (Fig. 1 B no. 1). The entrance was situated in the center of the porticus; it gave access to a central hall (Fig. 2, VIII) and to the representative rooms such as the main building which were heated by a hypocaust. The rooms for domestic activities such as the kitchen and service rooms were located to the back.
Two cellars under the rooms X and XIII were used for storage purposes. The cellar under room X yielded the most important archaeological objects of the villa, about 2600 fragments of burnt ivory objects. They made it possible to reconstruct a wooden casket with several application made from ivory. Cellar X obviously contained the treasury of the villa; cellar XIII, food for human alimentation.
The villa was destroyed during the barbarian invasion into Gaul in 256-8 AD, which followed the main Roman roads. The most recent coin found in the villa was an antoninianus of Valerius, coined in Rome AD 254. Because the rescue excavation focused mainly on the building structures, and the open space of the inner courtyard was not completely excavated, the direct garden evidence is faint. Herb gardens and fruit tree gardens can be assumed near the back of the main building. The presence of gardens is indicated by the rich archaeobotanical evidence. The destruction of the villa by fire preserved plant remains. Archaeobotanical analysis of the plant material revealed huge amounts of carbonized cereals and grape pips from building D. The assemblage is dominated by naked wheat (Triticum aestivum s.l./durum/turgidum), hulled barley (Hordeum vulgare) and pips of cultivated grape (Vitis vinifera vinifera). The botanical assemblages from building D contained thousands of grape pips, but also fragmented Vitis stalks and carbonized underdeveloped complete grapes. A possible explanation is that the agricultural building D of the villa complex was not only used to dry and store cereal grain, but also contained a wine pressing area (Fig. 1 D indicated in grey, Fig. 2, rooms II-XII). Archaeobotanical evidence from the villa 'des Tuillières' at Selongey, Côte d'Or, and from the villa 'Tête de Fer' near Avallon also point clearly to local viticulture during the third century AD.
Furthermore, there is evidence of lentil (Lens culinaris) and broad bean (Vicia faba), which were most probably cultivated either in the gardens of the villa or on small fields in the vicinity. Carbonized scales from walnuts and uncarbonized fruit stones from peach (Prunus persica) and damson (Prunus insititia) indicate cultivation of fruit trees in the gardens while hazel (Corylus avellana) and sloe (Prunus spinosa) were most probably fruits collected from the wild.
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Images
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Dates
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Bibliography
- J.C. Beal with the collaboration of d'A. et A. Ruellet, La resserre de Selongey (Côte d'Or): une collection d'objets de bois et d'ivoire dans la villa des Tuillières,» Revue Archéologique de l'Est xx
- E. Gauthier, M. Joly, « Vignoble et viticulture dans le centre-est de la Gaule au Ier siècle « .in: F. Favory/A. Vignot (eds.), Actualités de la Recherche en Histoire et Archéologie agraires. Actes du colloque international AGER V, Besançon 2000.
- Collection Annales Littéraires No. 764, Série Environnement, sociétés et archéologie 5(2003) :191-208, Besançon;
- A. Olivier, A. Ruellet, « Selongey, « La villa » In: Archéologie de Bourgogne. La Côte d'Or » Dijon, Musée Archéologique/Errance, Paris, 1990, pp. 77-78; A. Ruellet, « La villa des Tuillières à Selongey, » in L'autoroute au pays des Lingons. Archéologie et autoroute A31. Sociétés des autoroutes Paris-Rhin-Rhône, Dijon, 1989, pp. 34-39: A. and A. Ruellet, J.-C. Beal, « La villa de Selongey. » in Il était une fois la Côte d'Or. 20 ans de recherches archéologiques [exhibition catalogue Dijon, Musée archéologique], Paris, pp. 95-104; J. Wiethold, "'How to trace the 'Romanisation' of central Gaule by archaeobotanical analysis?" in F. Favory/A. Vignot (eds.), Actualités de la Recherche en Histoire et Archéologie agraires. Actes du colloque international AGER V, Besançon 2000. Collection Annales Littéraires No. 764, Série Environnement, sociétés et archéologie 5(2003) : 269-282.
- Ch.W. Martin, Note sur les fouilles exécutées en 1876 sur l'emplacement de la station romaine de Ste-Marguerite-sur-Mer (Seine inférieure), in Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie, 1861, p. 319-326. (worldcat)
- abbé J. Loth, Fouilles de Ste-Marguerite-sur-Mer, in Bulletin de la Commission des antiquités de la Seine-Inférieure, Rouen, 1870, p. 68-75. (worldcat)
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