Excavations done on a French abbey from medieval times has led to the revelation of over 1,000 burials, including victims of plagues, within its cemetery. Remains of a village from almost 1,200 years ago have also been found beneath the building.
Beaumont Abbey Excavations
The excavations done in Beaumont Abbey reveal nearly 800 years of use before French Revolution events led to its shutdown. This dig serves as the first time a European abbey has undergone full excavations. It produces new data regarding Catholic convent evolution.
Beaumont Abbey is situated outside of Tours in France's Loire Valley. It is roughly 178 kilometers southwest of Paris. It was founded in 1002 on a site that a Belmon village had already been occupied since 845. According to historical records, the abbey quickly grew to become the province's largest community of nuns.
However, in 1789, amidst the French Revolution, the abbey and its land ended up seized by the state. The 46 nuns at the abbey also ended up getting expelled. Eventually, the church and its linked building were torn down during the early 19th century.
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Rich History in Beaumont Abbey
Excavations started in September 2022 and went on until December 2023. According to Philippe Blanchard, the excavation's leader from the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap), they were able to excavate as many elements as possible. These include the whole church, the whole cloister, all the facilities, all the buildings at the periphery, the dwellings of the abbey, the kitchen, the refectory, the parlor, the sink, the dovecote, the cellar, the cisterns, the ovens, the wash house, the pipes, the icebox, the dumps, the latrines, and over 1,000 burials from different periods.
The team was also able to discover physical proof of Belmons village.
Such efforts reveal that the abbey church went through at least two major changes in structure before it was eventually torn down. The first one was small, involving a flat apse, which is a semicircular structure with a roof that is semi-domed. In the 11th to 12th century, this ended up doubling in size. After one to two centuries, the church grew, as the ambulatory was added.
However, there were also smaller-scale renovations that took place during the abbey's eight centuries of use. Blanchard explains that they added toilets, redid tiles, and added rooms.
Similar to the abbey, the Beaumont cemetery also grew as time passed and was used by many groups. Skeletal analysis on the recovered remains has just started. Blanchard hipes that they will be able to know where the people came from, what their health was, and what they ate.
Blanchard adds that they know that the plague epidemic took place in 1563 and that within the same week, nine of them died and were buried in one grave.
He also notes that there could be high-ranking members of the church buried in the tombs, as there are texts that note the tomb of an abbess buried with several pots. The abbess could have been Madame de Bourbon-Conde, who was Louis XIV's granddaughter. She embraced the life of a nun in roughly 1720 and became Beaumont's abbess in 1732. She eventually died in 1772. It is likely that the abbess had a comfortable life, with a home of her own and servants to run it.
Though the burial vault of Madame de Bourbon-Conde has likely been found, Balnchard notes that only a few ceramics and bones were found and that the tombstone was found somewhere else within the site. Blanchard notes that this tomb is one of the first ones that were opened during the French Revolution. Back then, due to the scarcity of lead, burial vaults ended up opened so that lead coffins could be used for the production of patriot bullets for armies.
Blanchard notes that the excavations have been fully filled in, permitting further development.
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