Tasciaca was an ancient vicus (secondary settlement) characterized by a series of Gallo-Roman settlements located in the communes of Thésée, Pouillé, and Monthou-sur-Cher, on either side of the Cher River, in the French department of Loir-et-Cher in the Centre-Val de Loire region.
Tasciaca appears on the Peutinger table, designating a stopover from Avaricum (Bourges) to Caesarodunum (Tours). The settlement, on the border of the civitates of the Turons, Carnutes, and Bituriges Cubes, seems to have been developing since the beginning of our era; it was very active during the High Empire, with significant production of common ceramics, glassware, and metal objects, before declining from the 2nd century onwards, without however being abandoned under the Merovingians.
On the left bank of the Cher, the site includes a fanum, a basin with a possibly religious role and at least one well, some 40 potter's kilns whose ceramics are found in several archaeological sites in the Centre-Val de Loire region, as well as other facilities with less well-documented functions, such as buildings with multiple rooms, several fords (although they cannot be dated), perhaps two piers and a hypothetical bridge in the Cher riverbed. The best-known feature of the site, however, is the Mazelles (or Maselles) complex, a monumental group of buildings on the right bank of the Cher, possibly linked to navigation on the river or road traffic, the largest of which has a footprint of almost fifty meters long by some twenty meters wide. Other remains, possibly including a temple, identified in the early 2000s to the west of the site previously located in Thésée and Pouillé, show that Tasciaca appears to have extended downstream into the neighboring commune of Monthou-sur-Cher, stretching for over two kilometers along the Cher. Everything remains to be discovered about the heart of this agglomeration, its public buildings, and its function(s).
The Roman ruins at Les Mazelles, owned by the Loir-et-Cher departmental council, are listed as a historic monument in the 1840 list. The fanum and kiln area at Pouillé, owned by the same local authority, is in a protected archaeological zone, but some of its remains are in an advanced state of deterioration.
Geographical and historical context
A river valley between two limestone hillsides
The Tasciaca site is located in the Cher valley, which was canalized in the 19th century and is now around 50 m wide. This valley, composed of Quaternary alluvial deposits brought down by the Cher, cuts deeply into the limestone plateau (Turonian and later), which rises to an altitude of around 80 m on the northern edge of Thésée and towards Pouillé to the south, where the valley settles at 65 m at the Pouillé archaeological site and drops to 61 m at Monthou-sur-Cher. Between the D176 to the north and the D17 to the south, the valley is around 1.3 km wide at the site. Thésée is also located at the confluence of the Cher and the Renne, a small right bank tributary rising in the commune of Sassay.
These geological features mean that the materials used in Antiquity can be found on site: sand in the valley, lime, and limestone in the lower slopes for building purposes, and decalcification clay on the upper slopes or in the valley bottoms under the alluvium for pottery.
The remains are located in the valley, but also at the beginning of the slopes of the hillsides, in three different nuclei: Monthou-sur-Cher (le Moulin du Ru), Pouillé (les Bordes and la Soler) and Thésée (le Grand Cimetière and the village, extending westwards to Les Mazelles after a break of several hundred meters). Although some parts of the valley were regularly flooded in the 21st century, it seems that in ancient times these areas were less prone to flooding, as the average level of the unchannelled Cher was lower.
A strategic site at the crossroads of several regions
Under the Roman Empire, river navigation was a favored mode of transport, supported and accompanied by a road network, a large part of which, in Gallic territories, was inherited from before the conquest. The Cher valley was on a major route from Lugdunum (Lyon) via Bourges to the Atlantic Ocean and the English Channel.
The Tasciaca site stretches along both banks of the Cher. Since the Middle Ages, the river has marked the boundary of several dioceses: parishes on the right bank of the Cher came under the diocese of Orléans, and those on the left bank under the diocese of Tours. These dioceses are generally based on the boundaries of the civitates of Roman administration in Antiquity. In this hypothesis, the northern part of the site would have belonged to the civitas of the Carnutes and later the Aureliani, while the southern part would have been part of the civitas of the Turones. However, despite the lack of certainty, researchers agree that the entire Tasciaca site belongs to the Turon territory.
Be that as it may, the town occupies a special geographical position, reinforced by its proximity to the territorial limits of the powerful Bituriges Cubes: the Turones, Carnutes and Aureliani belong to the province of Gaul Lyonnaise, while the Bituriges Cubes belong to Gaul Aquitaine.
A stop on the Peutinger table
The Peutinger table is a medieval parchment, a repeatedly updated copy of an ancient document, which depicts the main routes of the Roman Empire and the milestones on the way from one city to another. On the route from Avaricum (Bourges) to Casaroduno (for Caesarodunum, Tours), which in all likelihood follows the Cher valley from Foëcy, the consonance of the names and the distances mentioned, despite discrepancies in interpretation that may be due to errors made by the copyists of the Peutinger table, allows us to equate the Tasciaca station with Thésée, while the station to the right on the same route, labeled Gabris, most probably refers to Gièvres and/or Chabris.
For historian Jean Martin-Demézil, the name Tasciaca could derive from a Gallo-Roman toponym and the suffix -acum, the whole being declined in the plural. For Albert Dauzat and Charles Rostaing, it's the Latin anthroponym Tatius with the same suffix -acum.
Ancient sites on either side of Tasciaca in the Cher valley The remains of Tasciaca are not the only evidence of human presence in this part of the Cher valley in antiquity. Even if reports, mostly from the middle of the 19th century and sometimes geographically imprecise, must be interpreted with caution, they testify to a dense occupation of the valley.
At Saint-Romain-sur-Cher, 4 km upstream from Thésée, on the same bank of the Cher, a village-street was occupied from at least Augustus to the end of the 1st century, with more than ten buildings and private baths, craft workshops and perhaps a mausoleum, arranged on either side of a road.
In the village of Pouillé, south of the Tasciaca artisanal hub, an aqueduct, burials, and remains of buried structures were reported in the 19th century. At Angé and Bourré,Since January 1, 2016, Bourré has been a delegated commune within the new commune of Montrichard Val de Cher. ancient occupation is certain (villa and/or necropolis, possible temple)13,14,15; upstream from Pouillé, at Mareuil-sur-Cher, nineteenth-century authors attribute the remains of private baths to a large villa, perhaps accompanied by a necropolis, but the reliability of this information, which is old and poorly documented, is low.
Timeline
A valley occupied since Mesolithic times
Excavations at Les Mazelles have demonstrated Mesolithic occupation of the site, yielding several tools.
More broadly, Neolithic human occupation of the Cher valley is attested by reports of polissoirs, dolmens, menhirs and cromlechs at Monthou-sur-Cher, Pouillé and Thésée, but these testimonies all disappeared in the 21st century; it is not certain, however, that they all existed, as the reliability of some 19th-century sources is uncertain. The Crémaillère polishing works in Monthou-sur-Cher, on the other hand, have survived. Prior to the construction of the A85 freeway, preventive excavations on the borders of Thésée and Mareuil-sur-Cher revealed the existence of Neolithic settlements whose occupation continued into the Bronze Age.
Gold coins, imitations of Greek staters (in the commune of Thésée, but not located), and shards of ceramics or amphorae (on the Bordes site in Pouillé), can be dated to La Tène. On the left bank of the river, at Angé, west of Pouillé, a Gallic farmhouse has been identified.
The heyday of the High Roman Empire The beginning of the Augustan period is poorly documented (a coin bearing the emperor's effigy has been found), but from the first decades of the 1st century, trade and crafts developed significantly and simultaneously across the entire site, although the relationships between the three main poles of occupation (Monthou, Pouillé, and Thésée) remain unclear. In the following century, the Pouillé industrial zone expanded and new buildings replaced the old ones, at the same time as the Mazelles buildings were erected. As no remains of public monuments have been found, it is not possible to locate the center of this settlement. Coins found on site (mainly in the Pouillé area) confirm that Tasciaca was at its height during this period: the oldest are dated to the Julio-Claudian period (27 B.C.-68 A.D.), and the most recent to the reign of Arcadius (395-408), found at Les Mazelles in a probable context of partial or temporary occupation of the buildings.
This period of intense activity at Tasciaca came to an end at the beginning of the 2nd century, as the small number of archaeological finds attributable to this period would seem to indicate. However, the site continued to be frequented by people representing a social elite, and was not completely abandoned; some people even minted their coins. However, it's not possible to say that all the settlements active during the High Kingdom are still inhabited. This general decline is probably a consequence of the period of instability experienced by the Roman Empire, but at Tasciaca, as at many other sites, there are insufficient sources to confirm this.
Focus on Theseus in the Middle Ages
During the High Middle Ages, Tasciaca continued to be occupied, but only to the benefit of the town of Thésée. According to Jacqueline Cadalen-Lesieur, the Merovingian necropolis identified near Saint-Georges church, thanks to the presence of at least fourteen stone sarcophagi, seems to demonstrate this. A first church may have been built in the 10th century on the same site; a vanished chape, located a little to the north of the church, maybe older. Merovingian coins, probably locally minted (two triens are marked THAISACAS), have been found at Thésée. In the 10th century, Thésée was also the administrative center of a viguerie within the pagus Aurelianensis, which confirms the persistence of its administrative function.
From this time onwards, viticulture played an increasingly important role in the local economy, replacing manufacturing activities. The ancient sites of Pouillé (La Soler and Les Bordes) and the Mazelles area appear to have been deserted, as no mention is made of them in medieval sources; a burial site dating from the early Middle Ages was, however, found in one of the ancient buildings of Les Bordes. On the other hand, the Moulin du Ru is mentioned in the Monthou-sur-Cher priory's land register in the early 16th century.
Contemporary “Theseus” seeks to reconnect with its ancient past