From the Archaeology Travel Photo Album today:
A series of photographs of a Roman mosaic floor from the archaeological site in Saint-Romain-en-Gal, and now housed in the Musée d’Archéologie nationale (National Archaeology Museum) in Saint-Gemain-en-Laye, just outside of Paris.
At the northern boundary of Gallia Narbonennsis was the city of Vienna, which developed at a key crossing on the Rhône River. Today the Rhône forms a boundary between two different administrative departments, and the modern day towns are Vienne, on the east bank, and Saint-Romain-en-Gal, on the left. In 1967 archaeologists started excavating the remains of a town house on a river terrace in Saint-Romain-en-Gal, along with a number of other buildings that were part of an industrial district.
The site is still being excavated, but much of it is now open to the public and an onsite museum displays the artefacts from these [website]. One of the mosaic floors from the town house is now on display in the National Archaeology Museum just outside of Paris.
The mosaic pavement is relatively well preserved, and dates to the beginning of the third century AD. Originally, a total of 40 square panels made up the mosaic, but only 27 of these have survived – all of which are now on display in the Gallo-Roman section of the National Archaeology Museum in Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
The four central-most panels depict the four seasons: winter, spring, summer and autumn. Each of the panels surrounding the seasonal representations are specific depictions of the various agricultural and rural activities and religious festivals that would have made up the annual cycle of life in third century Roman Gaul, as well as other symbolic images of the four seasons.
For detailed information about the archaeological sites and museums in modern-day Vienne and Saint-Romain-en-Gal, I can recommend James Bromwich’s The Roman Remains of Southern France … read my review here.