History of excavation

A history of excavation is always at the same time a history of the historical perception of an object and a history of findings in general.

After Sebatum as such had apparently been forgotten during the Middle Ages, i.e. between c8 and c15 AD, the humanist historian Wolfgang Lazius is the first who in his Rei publicae Romanae in exteris provinciis, published in AD 1551, writes that because of not more precisely defined stone slabs with inscriptions, Aguntum has to be looked for in Innichen, Littamum in Luttach in the Ahrntal and Sebatum in Schwaz in North Tyrol.

In c18 AD A. Roschmann in his Geographia Tyrolensis Romana  lists the antiquities found in Pustertal. However in his Littamum nunc vicina ad St. Laurentium, a manuscript dating AD 1754, he also believes St Lorenzen to be Littamum.

Oktogon Grabung
 Foundation walls west of the Sturmbühel. In the background on the left there are probably  baths, in the foreground on the right the octagonal building which was partly demolished when building the road, most probably a nymphaeum.
C2 – c3 AD

The Zeitschrift des Ferdinandeums, a journal of that institute, in 1835 reports of a stone sarcophagus, fibulas and other small objects found in Pflaurenz near St Lorenzen.

During the building of the railway a further sarcophagus is found in the same area.

The decisive Roman mile stone of Macrinus and Diadumenianus however is rediscovered at the Sonnenburg in 1857.

In 1873 Th. Mommsen publishes his Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum where, on the basis of different inscriptions, but mainly in the light of above mentioned mile stone, in a brilliant achievement of logical deduction, he is able to demonstrate that Aguntum was next to Lienz , Littamum next to Innichen and Sebatum next to St Lorenzen.

Now, finally, Sebatum has returned to our consciousness.

1893 the new road towards Montal is traced out. Several Roman cremation tombs with stamped lamps, glass urns and glass mugs, bone dice, coins and other tools.

1907 Moroder reports of the find of pottery, a bronze coin of Antoninus Pius and the fragment of a Roman altar with the inscription IOM and DO and the name Aemilius Ninnus and of other objects east of St Lorenzen at a small hilltop, the Sturmbühel.

Now we can approximately define the extent of the town which extended from the fields south of Pflaurenz to the mortar walls found while ploughing at the beginning of the century on the Stocker Stole in the north and to the Sturmbühel in the west.

Therme Peintner
 The thermae of the mansion house in the Peintner Field. C2 – c3 AD.

1917 the Gadertal road happens to be enlargened and further galss urns and vessels can be added.

The new Pustertal road is built from Juli 1934 on. Instead of going through the village, it runs north of it, along the right bank of the river Rienz. During the works several walls are discovered and the head of the Office for the Preservation of Monuments of Padova, Giovanni Brusin who is then in charge of the area, conducts the first systematic excavations in the years 1938-39.

The foundation walls of the hypocausts and of the huge hemicycle are uncovered which today are situated next to the main road. Unfortunately only fragmentary excavation report follow which in addition, according to the philosophy of those years are strongly politically coloured.

The second and up to the present last systematic excavation took place in connection with the enlargement and conjunction of the old crossroads with the new Bruneck ring road south in the years 1981 – 84 in co-operation of the Office for the Preservation of Monuments of Bozen with that of Veneto. During this campaign the foundation walls of the Puenland House could be uncovered, as well as part of the Roman road east of Sebatum, together with the thermae of a mansion-house and several foundation walls of smaller buildings. An extensive publication of the material however have yet to come.