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Origin and history

The archaeological site of Premier Silorit is an ancient Gallo-Roman village located in Deneuvre, in Meurthe-et-Moselle (Great East region). Founded in the second century and abandoned at the end of the fourth century, it occupied a strategic position on an ancient axis crossing the Meurthe valley. His role was both religious and artisanal, reflecting the importance of exchanges and cult practices in the region during the Roman era.

The excavations carried out between 1974 and 1984 revealed a sanctuary dedicated to Hercules, composed of five ritual basins fed by two sources and connected by wooden or stone pipes. These facilities, designed to withstand the weather, were surrounded by a hundred local sandstone steles representing Hercules with its club and lion skin. These ex-votos, offerings of pilgrims, delineated the sacred space and testify to the importance of Herculean worship in Roman Gaul.

Water played a central role in rituals, serving as a medium to come into contact with the divinity. Traces of broken statues and fires on the site suggest a decline related to the rise of Christianity in the fourth to fifth centuries. Archaeological furniture, including the largest corpus of Gallo-Roman religious statuary in Lorraine, justified its inscription in historical monuments in 1998.

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