Excisum
EXCISUMa place in Gallia, appears in the Antonine Itin. as the next place after Aginnum (Agen) on a road from Bordeauxto Argentomagus ( Argenton). The distance is 13 Gallic leagues from Aginnum to Excisum. The Table gives the same distance. D'Anville ( Notice, &c. ) says that the site of Excisum is Ville Neuve, which has succeeded to another and an older place, the monastery of which was named Exsciense in the titles of the abbey of Moissac.
[G.L]An important way-station situated N of Agen (Aginnum) at the ancient crossroads of ways linking Bordeaux to Lyon and Bourges to Auch, Eysses produced various finds in the course of the 19th c., in the neighborhood of a monument known as the Tour d'Eysses, which is still partially preserved. It consists today of a circular structure (diameter, 11 m; average height, 10 m), its walls an average of 1.1 m thick. The two dressed faces of these walls were covered with rows of small masonry, among which remain the iron clamps which served to hold in place a marble revetment. The same characteristics may be seen on the tower of V&ésone in Périgueux. The monument at Eysses belongs, like the latter, to a series of indigenous temples made up of a cella surrounded by an ambulatory gallery, erected in the center of a large esplanade surrounded by a peribolos.
Soundings made since 1970 have revealed remains of buildings in the neighborhood of this sanctuary, which date, according to amphorae and coins, to the first half of the 1st c. A.D. These recent discoveries have narrowed the proposed date for the temple's construction to the 1st to 2nd c. The furnishings from earlier excavations (including a Celtic bronze horse's head) and recent finds, are divided between the museums of Agen and Vileneuve-sur-Lot.
BIBLIOGRAPHYJ. F. Boudon de Saint Amans, Essai sur les antiquités du département du Lot-et-Garonne (1859) 61ff; Grenier, Manuel d'arch. gallo-romaine III. 1 449I.
M. GAUTHIER