Hortus Artium Medievalium

Latest research on the ghost towns from Upper Arlanza Basin (Burgos, Spain) provide with new data for a renewed interpretation of such archaeological evidences. Ancient fieldworks focused their attention to the exclusive analysis of religious areas and funerary enclosures of these evidences of peopling processes, usually neglecting most of the habitat and production structures. From this standpoint, there is a misrepresentation of these remains because of the incomplete view of these settlements, which are mostly identified on the basis of necropolis and cave-dwelling tombs. Unfortunately, this lack of knowledge has gone on. Despite the difficulties to interpret properly these material evidences, it is possible to redo some of the common elements referring to the religious buildings and their funerary areas. Through these remains, there is a chance to examine the composition of the sacred area so as the links and relationships among the use of the funerary area in order to show the progress to the strengthening of the medieval cemetery detected within rural communities.

In the 2011 campaign the southern and central apses, as well as the southern nave of the abbey church of St Peter, together with its immediate surroundings were excavated. The primary analysis of the eastern part of the Venetian town wall was undertaken as well. The geophysical survey of the western and south-eastern parts of the complex has equally been continued. The initial results allow us to present a phasing of the early Romanesque church, possibly preceded by two earlier churches, as well as to complete the ground plan thanks to the discovery of the former bell-tower, containing a funerary room (maybe a chapel) in its ground level. Furthermore, the monastic topography was clarified by the discovery of a new construction - probably funerary - situated to the south of the church, a structure situated to the south-east easily recognizable as a possible cloister, and finally by the existence of a long monastic building situated in the eastern part of the monastery, and integrated into the Venetian city walls at the end of the Middle Ages.

The Eastern parts of the former abbey church in Saint-Antoine-en-Viennois, which have never been correctly analyzed appear to be very important for the comprehension of the development of Gothic architecture in Rhône-Alpes region. Constructed on a late 12^th century base, the choir and its chapels show how rapidly Burgundian Gothic style spreads in the first half of the 13^thcentury by means of regional and very important edifices that the Lyon and Vienne cathedrals represent. Moreover, the choice of that modern architecture appears to be linked to the historical context of the village, where the Benedictine monks, who control the church and the relics of Anthony the Great, conflict with the Hospital Brothers of St Anthony. In this context, the construction of the church precisely helps the Benedictine monks to assert their own legitimacy by establishing artistic links with Lyon and Vienne and before being definitively disowned by Pope Boniface VIII in 1297.