Nantosuelta
In Celtic mythology, Nantosuelta is the goddess of nature, the earth and fertility. Pseudo-historical texts explain how there is an uncanny resemblance between Nantosuelta and what we know of the Irish goddess The Morrígan, associated with death and war. Evidence suggests that Nantosuelta was the name given to the goddess The Morrígan after a transformation or joining of new alliances; the Mediomatrici depicted her in art as holding a round house with a crow. Other depictions show her with a pot or bee hive. Nantosuelta's round house was a symbol of her connection to the faery habitation of her Irish counterpart and may have symbolized abundance, it was believed that Nantosuelta transformed into a crow on the battlefield, an appropriate transformation for the goddess or may have been a metaphor for her ability to powerfully navigate a battlefield. Nantosuelta is associated with water and depicted as being surrounded by water; the goddess's name translates as'of winding stream' or'sun-drenched valley'.
Nantosuelta is attested by statues, by inscriptions. In this relief from Sarrebourg, near Metz, wearing a long gown is standing to the left. In her left hand she holds a small house-shaped object with a peaked roof, her right hand holds a patera. To the right Sucellus stands, bearded, in a tunic with a cloak on his right shoulder, he holds an olla in his left. Above the figures is a dedicatory inscription and below them in low relief is bird, of a raven; this sculpture was dated by Reinach, from the form of the letters, to the end of the first century or start of the second century. An altar from Metz has a carving of a woman with similar dress to the Sarrebourg example holding a small house on a pole, thus presumed to be Nantosuelta. Sucellus is not shown on this example; the inscription on the Sarrebourg altar reads: Deo Svcello / Nantosvelte / Bellavsvs Mas / se filivs v s l m "To the god Sucellus and to Nantosuelta, son of Massa and deservedly fulfilled his vow."The inscription on the Metz altar says: In h d d / M Tignuarius / v s l m "In honour of the divine house, Marcus Tignuarius willingly and deservedly fulfilled his vow."Here the dedication is to the Imperial house, Nantosuelta is not explicitly mentioned.
The visual depiction makes the identification secure. Delamarre asserts that the name means'sun-warmed valley'. Roux in 1952, Olmstead in 1994, Polomé in 1997 maintained that the proto-Indo-European root *swel-'swelter', found in Indo-European words denoting'sun', was inherited into Gaulish. Année Epigraphique, volume 1896. Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies. Proto-Celtic—English lexicon. University of Wales. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, volume 13, Tres Galliae. Delamarre, X.. Dictionnaire de la Langue Gauloise. 2nd edition. Paris, Editions Errance. ISBN 2-87772-237-6 Deyts, S. Ed. A la rencontre des Dieux gaulois, un défi à César. Paris, Réunion des Musées Nationaux. ISBN 2-7118-3851-X Heichelheim, F. M. and J. E. Housman and Nantosuelta in Mediaeval Celtic Mythology, in: L'antiquité classique 17, pp. 305-316 Jufer, N. and T. Luginbühl Répertoire des dieux gaulois. Paris, Editions Errance. ISBN 2-87772-200-7 Le Roux "Le soleil dans les langues Celtiques." Ogham 4, p. 93. Olmstead, G; the Gods of the Celts and the Indoeuropeans.
Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft-Archaeolingua, Sonderheft 92. Polomé, E. C. Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie, 49-50. Porkorny, Julius Indogermanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch Berlin: Franke Verlag Reinach, S. Cultes, mythes et religions. Le musée de Liffol-le-Grand has a reconstructed shrine to Nantosuelta
Barrel
A barrel, cask, or tun is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, traditionally made of wooden staves bound by wooden or metal hoops. Traditionally, the barrel was a standard size of measure referring to a set capacity or weight of a given commodity. For example, in the UK a barrel of beer refers to a quantity of 36 imperial gallons. Wine was shipped in barrels of 119 litres. Barrel has come into use as a generic term for a wooden cask of any size. Modern wooden barrels for wine-making are either made of French common oak and white oak or from American white oak and have standard sizes: "Bordeaux type" 225 litres, "Burgundy type" 228 litres and "Cognac type" 300 litres. Modern barrels and casks can be made of aluminum, stainless steel, different types of plastic, such as HDPE. Someone who makes barrels is called cooper. Barrels are only one type of cooperage. Other types include, but are not limited to, the making of buckets, tubs, butter churns, firkins, kilderkins, rundlets, pipes, butts and breakers.
Barrels have a variety of uses, including storage of liquids such as water and oil, fermenting wine and sake, maturing beverages such as wine, armagnac, port and beer. Other commodities once stored in wooden casks include gunpowder, fish, paint and tallow. Early casks were bound with wooden hoops and in the 19th century these were replaced by metal hoops that were stronger, more durable and took up less space; the term barrel can refer to cylindrical containers made of modern materials like plastic. An "aging barrel" is used to age wine; when a wine or spirit ages in a barrel, small amounts of oxygen are introduced as the barrel lets some air in. Oxygen enters a barrel when water or alcohol is lost due to evaporation, a portion known as the "angels' share". In an environment with 100% relative humidity little water evaporates and so most of the loss is alcohol, a useful trick if one has a wine with high proof. Most beverages are topped up from other barrels to prevent significant oxidation, although others such as vin jaune and sherry are not.
Beverages aged in wooden barrels take on some of the compounds in the barrel, such as vanillin and wood tannins. The presence of these compounds depends on many factors, including the place of origin, how the staves were cut and dried, the degree of "toast" applied during manufacture. Barrels used for aging are made of French or American oak, but chestnut and redwood are used; some Asian beverages use Japanese cedar, which imparts an minty-piney flavor. In Peru and Chile, a grape distillate named pisco is either aged in earthenware; some wines are fermented "on barrel", as opposed to in a neutral container like steel or wine-grade HDPE tanks. Wine can be fermented in large wooden tanks, which—when open to the atmosphere—are called "open-tops". Other wooden cooperage for storing wine or spirits range from smaller barriques to huge casks, with either elliptical or round heads; the tastes yielded by French and American species of oak are different, with French oak being subtler, while American oak gives stronger aromas.
To retain the desired measure of oak influence, a winery will replace a certain percentage of its barrels every year, although this can vary from 5 to 100%. Some winemakers use "200% new oak", where the wine is put into new oak barrels twice during the aging process. Bulk wines are sometimes more cheaply flavored by soaking in oak chips or added commercial oak flavoring instead of being aged in a barrel because of the much lower cost. Sherry is stored in 600-litre casks made of North American oak, more porous than French or Spanish oak; the casks, or butts, are filled five-sixths full, leaving "the space of two fists" empty at the top to allow flor to develop on top of the wine. Sherry is commonly swapped between barrels of different ages, a process, known as Solera. Laws in several jurisdictions require; the law in the United States requires that "straight whiskey" must be stored for at least two years in new, charred oak containers. Other forms of whiskey aged in used barrels cannot be called "straight".
International laws require any whisky bearing the label "Scotch" to be distilled and matured in Scotland for a minimum of three years and one day in oak casks. By Canadian law, Canadian whiskies must "be aged in small wood for not less than three years", "small wood" is defined as a wood barrel not exceeding 700 litres capacity. Since the U. S. law requires the use of new barrels for several popular types of whiskey, not considered necessary elsewhere, whiskey made elsewhere is aged in used barrels that contained American whiskey. The typical bourbon barrel is 53 US gallons in size, thus the de facto standard whiskey barrel size worldwide; some distillers transfer their whiskey into different barrels to "finish" or add qualities to the final product. These finishing barrels aged a different spi
Augusta Raurica
Augusta Raurica is a Roman archaeological site and an open-air museum in Switzerland located on the south bank of the Rhine river about 20 km east of Basel near the villages of Augst and Kaiseraugst. It is the site of the oldest known Roman colony on the Rhine. Augusta Raurica, or Colonia Augusta Rauracorum, was founded by Lucius Munatius Plancus around 44 BC in the vicinity of a local Gallic tribe, the Rauraci, relatives of the Helvetii. No archaeological evidence from this period has yet been found, leading to the conclusion that, either the settlement of the colony was disturbed by the civil war following the death of Julius Caesar, or that Plancus' colony was in the area of modern Basel, not Augst. Successful colonization of the site had to wait for Augustus' conquest of the central Alps around 15 BC; the oldest find to date at Augusta Raurica has been dated to 6 BC by dendrochronology. The inscription on Munatius Plancus' grave states the name of the colony as Colonia Raurica. A fragmentary inscription from the Augustinian period speaks of the Colonia P M naris merita ica.
Apart from this fragmentary reference, the first certain witness to the use of the name Augustus comes from the geographer Ptolemy in the Ancient Greek form Augústa Rauríkon. Augusta Raurica played an important role in Augustus' plans of conquest with two other colonies that bear his name: Augusta Praetoria and Augusta Vindelicum; these three Augustae form the corners of a triangle that reaches across the alpine conquests of Augustus, the long base of which form the Rhine knee to the Danube formed the frontier against unconquered Germania. During excavations it was determined that the city was founded on a high plateau just south of the Rhine river. Two small rivers, the Ergolz and Violen, have carved a triangle in the plateau, the base of, about 1 kilometer wide along the base of the Jura Mountains, the apex points northward toward the Rhine, about 1 kilometer from the base; this point is military fortification. The city is, well-defended by steep slopes to the north and west; the next step in planning the city was the surveying of the area according to the architect's plans for the city.
Every important public building had its specific place, starting with the temple of Jupiter as the sacred high point from which the street network would spread. The architect, responsible for executing the plans for the city, next laid a longitudinal axis across the triangle 36˚ west of north to form the main street of the settlement. Other longitudinal streets were laid out parallel to the main street at intervals of 55 meters; the main street was divided into sections of 66 meters, which formed the corners of 10 crossing streets. This created a series of rectangular blocks of around 50 by 60 meters; the streets were flanked by gutters on both sides. The more important roads featured covered sidewalks behind rows of columns; the limits of Colonia Raurica can no longer be determined with absolute accuracy. However the approximate boundaries can be determined by examining the extent of Augst in the Early Middle Ages; this would seem to indicate the colony extended from Basel toward the mouth of the Aare up the Aare to the mouth of the Sigger below Solothurn, across to the Lüssel, back down the Birs to Basel, though this is still conjecture.
New research, based on tiles stamped with the mark of the Vindonissa Legion, indicates some administrative dependence on Vindonissa. This would indicate that the colony reached over the Bözberg toward Frick, with the Thiersteinberg below Frick forming the eastern boundary; the western boundary, was near the mouth of the Birs marked by a border station. Early Roman cremation remains, found in 1937 by the church in Neuallschwil, show that such a post did exist on the main road north into Alsace; the Colonia Raurica, on the whole, contained the modern Canton of Basel, the Frick valley, the eastern Jura Mountains of the Canton of Solothurn. The total area of the colony was around 700 km². By the 2nd century AD, Augusta Raurica was a prosperous commercial trading centre and, in its glory days, the capital of a local Roman province, it is estimated that the population reached 20,000 people. Augusta Raurica prospered between the 1st and 3rd centuries, exported smoked pork and bacon to other parts of the Roman Empire.
The city possessed the typical amenities of a Roman city, an amphitheatre, a main forum, several smaller forums, an aqueduct, a variety of temples, several public baths and the largest Roman theatre north of the Alps, with 8,000 to 10,000 seats. Many of these sites are open to visitors year-round. In 250 AD, a powerful earthquake damaged a large part of the city. Shortly after, around 260 AD, Alemanni tribes and/or marauding Roman troops destroyed the city; the Romans attempted to maintain their military position by building a fortress on the Rhine, Castrum Rauracense, the walls of which are still intact. Augusta Raurica was resettled on a much smaller scale on the site of the castrum; these two settlements form the centers of the modern communities of Kaiseraugst. In 1442, these communities were divided along the Violenbach rivers; the western portion was given to Basel, which became a canton of Switzerland in 1501. In 1833, Augst became part of the Canton of Basel-Land; the eastern part became part of Habsburg territories and, to differentiate between the two towns, was renamed Kaiser
The Dagda
The Dagda is an important god in Irish mythology. One of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the Dagda is portrayed as a father-figure and druid, he is associated with fertility, agriculture and strength, as well as magic and wisdom. He is said to have control over life and death, the weather and crops, as well as time and the seasons, he is described as a large bearded man or giant wearing a hooded cloak. He owns a magic staff or club which can kill with one end and bring to life with the other, a cauldron which never runs empty, a magic harp which can control men's emotions and change the seasons, he is said to dwell in Brú na Bóinne. Other places associated with or named after him include Uisneach, Grianan of Aileach, Assaroe Falls and Lough Neagh; the Dagda is said to be husband of the Boann. His children include Aengus, Bodb Derg, Cermait and Midir, he is said to have two brothers and Ogma, but this may be an instance of the tendency to triplicate deities. The name Dagda is believed to come from Proto-Celtic: *Dagodeiwos, "the good god" or "the great god".
He has several other epithets which reflect aspects of his character. These include Eochu or Eochaid Ollathair, Ruad Rofhessa, Dáire, Fer Benn, Cerrce and Eogabal, it is argued that the death and ancestral god Donn was a form of the Dagda, he has similarities with the harvest figure Crom Dubh. Several tribal groupings saw the Dagda as an ancestor and were named after him, such as the Uí Echach and the Dáirine; the Dagda has been likened to the Germanic god Odin, the Gaulish god Sucellos, the Roman god Dīs Pater. Tales depict the Dagda as a figure of immense power, he is said to own a magic club or mace which could kill nine men with one blow. It was called the lorg anfaid, his magic cauldron was known as the coire ansic and was said to be bottomless, from which no man left unsatisfied. It was said to have a ladle so big. Uaithne known as "the Four Angled Music", was a richly ornamented magic harp made of oak which, when the Dagda played it, put the seasons in their correct order, he possessed two pigs, one of, always growing whilst the other was always roasting, ever-laden fruit trees.
The Dagda was one of the kings of the Tuatha De Danann. The Tuatha Dé Danann are the race of supernatural beings who conquered the Fomorians, who inhabited Ireland prior to the coming of the Milesians; the Mórrígan is described as his wife, his daughter was Brígh, his lover was Boann, after whom the River Boyne is named, though she was married to Elcmar. Prior to the battle with the Fomorians, he coupled with the goddess of war, the Mórrígan, on Samhain in exchange for a plan of battle. Despite his great power and prestige, the Dagda is sometimes depicted as oafish and crude comical, wearing a short, rough tunic that covers his rump, dragging his great penis on the ground; such features are thought to be the additions of Christian redactors for comedic purposes. The Middle Irish language Coir Anmann paints a less clownish picture: "He was a beautiful god of the heathens, for the Tuatha Dé Danann worshipped him: for he was an earth-god to them because of the greatness of his power." The name Dagda may be derived from the Proto-Indo-European *Dhagho-deiwos "shining divinity", the first element being cognate with the English word "day", a byword for a deification of a notion such as "splendour".
This etymology would tie in well with Dagda's mythic association with the sun and the earth, with kingship and excellence in general. *Dhago-deiwos would have been inherited into Proto-Celtic as *Dago-deiwos, thereby punning with the Proto-Celtic word *dago-s "good". Under the name Aed of Ess Ruaid, the Dagda is named as the son of Badurn, the Lord of Emain, the Grandson of Argatmar; the rapids in which he drowned were named Ess Ruaid and were called Ess Duind after Dond, the grandson of Bile. The Dagda had an affair with wife of Elcmar. In order to hide their affair, Dagda made. He, along with Bóand, helped Aengus search for his love. Whilst Aengus was away the Dagda shared out his land among his children, but Aengus returned to discover that nothing had been saved for him. Aengus tricked his father out of his home at the Brú na Bóinne. Aengus asked his father if he could live in the Brú for láa ogus oidhche " day and night", which in Irish is ambiguous, could refer to either "a day and a night", or "day and night", which means for all time, so Aengus took possession of the Brú permanently.
In The Wooing of Étaín, on the other hand, Aengus uses the same ploy to trick Elcmar out of Brú na Bóinne, with the Dagda's connivance. The Dagda was the father of Bodb Dearg, Midir, Áine, Brigit, he was the brother or father of Oghma, related to the Gaulish god Ogmios. Another Gaulish god who may be related to the Dagda is Sucellus, the striker, depicted with a hammer and cup, he is credited with a sevent
Celtic mythology
Celtic mythology is the mythology of Celtic polytheism, the religion of the Iron Age Celts. Like other Iron Age Europeans, the early Celts maintained a polytheistic mythology and religious structure. For Celts in close contact with Ancient Rome, such as the Gauls and Celtiberians, their mythology did not survive the Roman Empire, their subsequent conversion to Christianity and the loss of their Celtic languages, it is through contemporary Roman and Christian sources that their mythology has been preserved. The Celtic peoples who maintained either political or linguistic identities left vestigial remnants of their ancestral mythologies that were put into written form during the Middle Ages. Although the Celtic world at its height covered much of western and central Europe, it was not politically unified nor was there any substantial central source of cultural influence or homogeneity. Inscriptions of more than three hundred deities equated with their Roman counterparts, have survived, but of these most appear to have been genii locorum, local or tribal gods, few were worshiped.
However, from what has survived of Celtic mythology, it is possible to discern commonalities which hint at a more unified pantheon than is given credit. The nature and functions of these ancient gods can be deduced from their names, the location of their inscriptions, their iconography, the Roman gods they are equated with, similar figures from bodies of Celtic mythology. Celtic mythology is found in a number of distinct, if related, subgroups corresponding to the branches of the Celtic languages: Ancient Celtic religion mythology in Goidelic languages, represented chiefly by Irish mythology Mythological Cycle Ulster Cycle Fenian Cycle Cycles of the Kings mythology in Brittonic languages Welsh mythology Cornish mythology Breton mythology As a result of the scarcity of surviving materials bearing written Gaulish, it is surmised that the most of the Celtic writings were destroyed by the Romans, although a written form of Gaulish using Greek and North Italic alphabets was used. Julius Caesar attests to the literacy of the Gauls, but wrote that their priests, the druids, were forbidden to use writing to record certain verses of religious significance while noting that the Helvetii had a written census.
Rome introduced a more widespread habit of public inscriptions, broke the power of the druids in the areas it conquered. Although early Gaels in Ireland and parts of modern Wales used the Ogham script to record short inscriptions, more sophisticated literacy was not introduced to Celtic areas that had not been conquered by Rome until the advent of Christianity. Indeed, many Gaelic myths were first recorded by Christian monks, albeit without most of their original religious meanings; the oldest body of myths stemming from the Heroic Age is found only from the early medieval period of Ireland. As Christianity began to take over, the gods and goddesses were eliminated as such from the culture. What has survived includes material dealing with the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomorians, which forms the basis for the text Cath Maige Tuired "The Battle of Mag Tuireadh", as well as portions of the history-focused Lebor Gabála Érenn; the Tuatha Dé represent the functions of human society such as kingship and war, while the Fomorians represent chaos and wild nature.
The leader of the gods for the Irish pantheon appears to have been the Dagda. The Dagda was the figure on which male humans and other gods were based because he embodied ideal Irish traits. Celtic gods were considered to be a clan due to their lack of specialization and unknown origins; the particular character of the Dagda was as a figure of burlesque lampoonery in Irish mythology, some authors conclude that he was trusted to be benevolent enough to tolerate jokes at his own expense. Irish tales depict the Dagda as a figure of power, armed with a club. In Dorset there is a famous outline of an ithyphallic giant known as the Cerne Abbas Giant with a club cut into the chalky soil. While this was produced in modern times, it was long thought to be a representation of the Dagda; this has been called into question by recent studies which show that there may have been a representation of what looks like a large drapery hanging from the horizontal arm of the figure, leading to suspicion that this figure represents Hercules, with the skin of the Nemean lion over his arm and carrying the club he used to kill it.
In Gaul, it is speculated that the Dagda is associated with Sucellus, the striker, equipped with a hammer and cup. The Morrígan was a tripartite battle goddess of the Celts of Ancient Ireland, she was known as the Morrígan, but the different sections she was divided into were referred to as Nemain and Badb, with each representing different aspects of combat. She is most known for her involvement in the Táin Bó Cúailnge
Roman Gaul
Roman Gaul refers to Gaul under provincial rule in the Roman Empire from the 1st century BC to the 5th century AD. The Roman Republic began its takeover of Celtic Gaul in 121 BC, when it conquered and annexed the southern reaches of the area. Julius Caesar advanced the task by defeating the Celtic tribes in the Gallic Wars of 58-51 BC. In 22 BC, imperial administration of Gaul was reorganized, establishing the provinces of Gallia Aquitania, Gallia Belgica and Gallia Lugdunensis. Parts of eastern Gaul were incorporated into the provinces Germania Superior. During Late Antiquity and Roman culture amalgamated into a hybrid Gallo-Roman culture; the Gaulish language was marginalized and extinct, being replaced by regional forms of Late Latin which in the medieval period developed into the group of Gallo-Romance languages. Roman control over the provinces deteriorated in the 4th and 5th centuries, was lost to the kingdoms of the Franks and Burgundians; the last vestiges of any Roman control over parts of Gaul were effaced with the defeat of Syagrius at the Battle of Soissons.
Gaul had three geographical divisions, one of, divided into multiple Roman provinces: Gallia Cisalpina or "Gaul this side of the Alps", covered most of present-day northern Italy. Gallia Narbonensis Gallia Transalpina or "Gaul across the Alps" was conquered and annexed in 121 BC in an attempt to solidify communications between Rome and the Iberian peninsula, it comprised the present-day region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, most of Languedoc-Roussillon, the southeastern half of Rhône-Alpes. Gallia Comata, or "long haired Gaul", encompassed the remainder of present-day France and westernmost Germany, which the Romans gained through the victory over the Celts in the Gallic Wars; the Romans divided Gallia Comata into three provinces:Gallia Aquitania Gallia Belgica Gallia LugdunensisThe Romans divided these huge provinces into civitates corresponding more or less with the pre-Conquest communities or polities sometimes described misleadingly as "tribes," such as the Aedui, Allobroges and Sequani but the civitates were too large and in turn were divided into smaller units, pagi, a term that became the modern French word "pays".
These administrative groupings would be taken over by the Romans in their system of local control, these civitates would be the basis of France's eventual division into ecclesiastical bishoprics and dioceses, which would remain in place—with slight changes—until the French revolution. In the five centuries between Caesar's conquest and the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Gaulish language and cultural identity underwent a syncretism with the Roman culture of the new governing class, evolved into a hybrid Gallo-Roman culture that permeated all levels of society. Gauls continued writing some inscriptions in the Gaulish language, but switched from the Greek alphabet to the Latin alphabet during the Roman period. Current historical research suggests that Roman Gaul was "Roman" only in certain social contexts, the prominence of which in material culture has hindered a better historical understanding of the permanence of many Celtic elements; the Roman influence was most apparent in the areas of civic administration.
The Druidic religion was suppressed by Emperor Claudius I, in centuries Christianity was introduced. The prohibition of Druids and the syncretic nature of the Roman religion led to disappearance of the Celtic religion, it remains to this day poorly understood: current knowledge of the Celtic religion is based on archeology and via literary sources from several isolated areas such as Ireland and Wales. The Romans imposed their administrative, economic and literary culture, they wore the Roman tunic instead of their traditional clothing. The Romano-Gauls lived in the vici, small villages similar to those in Italy, or in villae, for the richest. Surviving Celtic influences infiltrated back into the Roman Imperial culture in the 3rd century. For example, the Gaulish tunic—which gave Emperor Caracalla his surname—had not been replaced by Roman fashion. Certain Gaulish artisan techniques, such as the barrel and chain mail were adopted by the Romans; the Celtic heritage continued in the spoken language.
Gaulish spelling and pronunciation of Latin are apparent in several 5th century poets and transcribers of popular farces. The last pockets of Gaulish speakers appear to have lingered until the 7th century. Gaulish was held to be attested by a quote from Gregory of Tours written in the second half of the 6th century, which describes how a shrine "called'Vasso Galatae' in the Gallic tongue" was destroyed and burnt to the ground. Throughout the Roman rule over Gaul, although considerable Romanization in terms of material culture occurred, the Gaulish language is held to have survived and continued to be spoken, coexisting with Latin. Germanic placenames were first attested in border areas settled by Germanic colonizers. From the 4th to 5th centuries, the Franks settled in northern France and Belgium, the Alemanni in Alsace and Switzerland, the Burgundians in Savoie; the Roman administration collapsed as remaining Roman troops withdrew southeast to protect Italy. Between 455 and 476 the Visigoths, the Burgundians, the Franks assumed control in Gaul.
However, certain aspects of the ancient Celtic culture continued after the fall of Roman administration and the Domain of Soissons, a remnant of th
Vienne
Vienne is a department in the French region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. It takes its name from the river Vienne. Established on March 4, 1790 during the French Revolution, Vienne is one of the original 83 departments, it was created from parts of the former provinces of Poitou and Berry, the latter being a part of the Duchy of Aquitaine until the 15th century. The original Acadians, who settled in and around what is now Nova Scotia, left Vienne for North America after 1604. Kennedy argues that the emigrants carried to Canada social structure, they were frontier peoples. They emphasized trading for a profit, they were politically active. Édith Cresson, France's first woman Prime Minister from 1991-1992, was a deputy for the department. It has three arrondissements: Poitiers, the prefecture, the subprefectures Châtellerault and Montmorillon; the capital Poitiers is the see of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Poitiers, which pastorally serves the department. The most famous tourist sites include the Futuroscope theme park, the Abbey Church of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, a UNESCO world heritage site, the animal parks of Monkey's Valley in Romagne & the Crocodile Planet in Civaux.
Goat cheese making is an important industry of Vienne. Vienne has a partnership relationship with: Communes of the Vienne department Cantons of the Vienne department Arrondissements of the Vienne department Anjou wine French Vienne Tourism Agency General Council website
