A rescue excavation, which began in February 2021 in the town of Rom (located in the Deux-Sèvres department, western France), upstream of a collective sanitation project, conducted by INRAP has uncovered nearly 150 burials in the area of the Saint-Paulin church.
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| Aerial view of part of the medieval cemetery in rue Trie-Nielle [Credit: D. Martins, Inrap] |
The present-day town of Rom is partly built on an ancient settlement at the crossroads of three Roman roads, including the imperial road linking Poitiers (Lemonum) to Saintes (Mediolanum). Numerous archaeological investigations, carried out since the end of the 19th century, have made it possible to date the establishment of Rauranum (Rom) to the 1st century AD.
In the 5th century, Rom saw the establishment of a Christian sanctuary (baptismal church?) which led to the development of a necropolis in the early Middle Ages. The medieval town developed around the parish church of Saint-Liphard (now Saint-Paulin), which was first mentioned in 1118 in a bull of Pope Gelasius I. This late attestation, which should not overlook the ancient origin of the first dedication (Saint-Liphard), seems to correspond to the period of reconstruction of the building in Romanesque form.
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| Medieval burial in Trie-Nielle street [Credit: D. Martins, Inrap] |
Numerous burials appear directly under the asphalt road surface. Sarcophagus tombs, dry-stone box tombs, and ‘in-ground’ graves or wooden caskets are arranged on at least three levels. A higher density appears to be found to the north of the church, in the Rue de la Rigaudière.
The 38 burials in Rue du Petit-Pont are in the form of sarcophagi (with and without a cephalic chamber) and sepulchral pits, which indicate burials in containers made of perishable materials. All age groups and both sexes are represented in the spectrum of the buried population.
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| Burial between four sarcophagi [Credit: D. Martins, Inrap] |
In the Rue Trie-Nielle, a concentration of around one hundred burials was excavated in a trench only one metre wide and about one hundred metres long. These burials, organised on at least two levels, are dated to the 9th-10th centuries. They take the form of simple pits with or without walls, pits dug into the limestone or coffers made of limestone slabs, sometimes masonry or with cephalic boxes. Once again all age groups and both sexes are represented. The first observations made on the subjects show some signs of functional pathologies, such as osteoarthritis, closed dental alveoli, and fused vertebrae…
Despite a limited window of investigation, these elements permit the documentation of burial practices to the south and east of the church of Rom. The presence of sarcophagi makes it possible to date this first phase of burials to the Merovingian period, with a hypothetical early phase of burials in wooden containers and/or in shrouds. In addition to radiocarbon dating to refine the chronology, palaeogenetic analyses may provide insight into the kinship of individuals buried within the same sarcophagus and between two sarcophagi of the same ‘group’.
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| Merovingian sarcophagus unearthed in the rue du Petit-Pont [Credit: D. Martins, Inrap] |
Thereafter, sarcophagus burials seem to have been abandoned in favour of pit burials. The density of burials discovered in Rue Trie-Nielle raises questions because of its distance from the church (about fifty to seventy metres). The existence of a Saint-Jacques toponym designating a square to the west and the mention of an almshouse in this sector indicate the presence of a cemetery belonging to this establishment. It might have been superimposed on the Carolingian cemetery, which in later periods would have been concentrated around the church, thus forming two burial centres in Rom: the parish cemetery and the chaplaincy cemetery.
Source: Inrap [trsl. TANN, June 11, 2021]
