Archaeology: in Toulouse, the dream of excavating the tomb of a Visigoth king
In our region, the in-depth study of burials and necropolises changes our view of the past.
In Occitania, the scientific study of burials and their dead has enabled archaeologists, anthropologists and historians to make considerable progress in understanding the past. The Gallo-Roman necropolis that emerged at the gates of Narbonne and excavated by Inrap in 2019 was thus a major discovery. The exceptional state of conservation of nearly 300 identified tombs out of the thousand that the site contains, as well as the diversity of funerary structures, even make it “a unique case” for specialists.
“The necropolis of Narbonne already appears as the reference for the study of funerary practices in Roman Gaul, but also for the knowledge of the plebs in Antiquity”, thus underlines the Inrap whose excavations have made it possible to learn a lot about the most modest inhabitants of the time, the slaves, the freedmen and in particular about the prosperity of this capital of Narbonnaise which was one of the largest ports in the western Mediterranean.
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Regarding the end of Antiquity and the High Middle Ages? About thirty kilometers from Toulouse, the cemetery disappeared from Mouraut, to Vernet, also excavated by Inrap in 2005, also revealed “a site of national importance”, recalled in March 2021 to The Dispatch archaeologist Didier Paya. Conducted on 305 burials ranging from the 5th to the 10th century, the site also allowed a “major discovery”. Dug after the fall of Rome, these tombs indeed unwound a precious Ariadne’s thread on the little-known period of the “Great Invasions”. From the Gallo-Romans to the Carolingians via the Merovingians, there were also Alano-Sarmatians there, often present with the Visigoths and seven deformed skulls with crescent moon earrings, typical of the… Huns. Speaking of the Visigoths who reigned over the region from 418 to 507/508…
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The recent exhibition at the Saint-Raymond museum “Visigoths, Kings of Toulouse” also presented the exceptional sarcophagus of the “Lady of Seysses”. “And beautiful discoveries remain to be made”, confides the anthropologist Éric Crubézy, with a greedy eye. “My dream would be to excavate the tomb of a Visigoth king in Toulouse,” he adds. And a dream not necessarily crazy… During the excavation that led to the construction of the Toulouse School of Economics, the Toulouse archaeologists indeed found “the bases of a square which probably correspond to a funerary enclosure, guided in the same way as the old church of Saint-Pierre des Cuisines, in the heart of the Visigothic quarter. Or a funerary enclosure at this place, it is probably a Visigoth king. On the situation, we still have to look…”, smiles the scientist.