Two millennia after its construction, no coarse potholes have broken the solid pavement of the Roman road. In Châteaugiron, in Ille-et-Vilaine, time has nevertheless done its work on the old road that connected the ancient city of Condate (Rennes) to Juliomagus (Angers). In recent months, this traffic axis has been exhumed over several meters by researchers from the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap), at a place called Grand Launay, south of the agglomeration.
As archaeologists have been able to realize, the route crosses from east to west the entire prescribed excavation area. Built in the first century AD, in the Gallo-Roman era, the road had been a victim of its success as evidenced by the numerous repairs of its central tread, the curved surface of the road. The technical aisles and the various outbuildings that flanked this ancient axis have also been excavated by researchers.
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The new section of this axis completes the growing data collected for several years about this ancient highway in northwestern Gaul. Several sections of the Roman road that ran from Rennes to Angers, over a hundred kilometers, are already known thanks to archaeology. In Avrillié, on the northwestern outskirts of Angers, some sections of the road were found during two separate excavation operations, organized by Inrap in 2018 and again this year, in the spring.
A new portion of the Roman road linking Rennes to Angers discovered in Brittany
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Quite well studied, this traffic axis did not wait for the conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar to be developed. The route of the Roman road follows the route of older paths, dated "to the Bronze Age or the beginning of the Iron Age" (that is to say around 1000 to 700 BC), according to a statement from Inrap. The use of this Roman road did not vanish with the end of antiquity. The path "has endured in the landscape for at least 1800 years," Frédéric Guérin, responsible for the last campaign of Avrillié, completed in May, told Ouest France. It was used in the medieval period and during the modern period."
Led by archaeologist Sandra Sicard, the excavation conducted by Inrap in Châteaugiron has been studying a 40-hectare area since September before it was transformed into a housing estate. In addition to the Roman road, archaeologists have uncovered a Neolithic agricultural occupation dated to the Villeneuve-Saint-Germain culture, around 4600 BC. Of a type quite rare in Brittany, this protohistoric site was bounded by a ditch and dominated by a large house, 25 meters long. An important domestic presence dating from the Gallic period has also been exhumed. The site will be open to the public for the European Archaeology Days, from 16 to 18 June.