Un édifice funéraire du haut Moyen Age à Seyssel Albigny (Haute-Savoie)

Abstract

Located on the banks of the Rhone, downstream from Lake Leman, the edifice of Seyssel-Albigny followed a small necropolis dating from the Low Empire implanted in the ruins of a Gallo-Roman urban center. The plan of the building is inscribed in a rectangle ; it includes a central nave opening to a flat chevet to the east and to annexes to the west, north and south. A campaign to consolidate the edifice appreciably modified the plan in the north without, however, affecting the major part of the building. Coffered flatstone tombs are found in the basement of the nave and the chevet. Outside, a cemetery spreading out to the south and east of the edifice received mostly tombs dug directly in the ground or in wooden coffers. Anthropological analysis has showed that the typological and spatial distribution of the tombs is to be related to the distribution of the dead according to the criterion of age of death, sex and probably also of social status.

Being Pagan, Being Christian in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages

“…The rules according to which these funerary areas are structured remain largely unknown, for the 5th and 6th centuries. In some funerary areas graves are organised around the funeral monument of a particular individual, while others show a hierarchy between individuals transcribed by the location of their graves, regardless of the existence of a sanctuary (Bizot and Serralongue 1988; for the northernmost regions of Gaul, see Demolon 2006; Pilet 1994). In the south-eastern part of Gaul, the scarcity of grave goods in contrast with the northern and eastern parts does not allow us to take these questions further: the burial assemblages appear as a juxtaposition of silent graves.…”

Abréviations

“…Les exemplaires issus des fouilles du TGV sont incomplets, ils sont cependant comparables à des récipients connus dans la région Rhône-Alpes (Faure-Boucharlat 2001) et dans les régions méridionales (Pelletier, Vallauri 1994 ;Pelletier 1997). La plupart des exemplaires connus possèdent un fond plat, mais il faut signaler certains exemplaires à fond bombé en Savoie à Seyssel, Ain (Bizot, Serralongue 1988), et à Lyon (Faure-Boucharlat et al 1980.…”