Kirchberg - Vicus

Kirchberg – the oldest town in the Hunsrück – is situated at the crossroads of important pre-historic paths.
Tumuli fields extend along the important junction, which connected the Nahe, Rhine and Moselle river valleys. In Roman times upgraded roads followed the course of the pre-historic paths.
During construction works in 1850 the foundations of a Roman street   which lead through Kirchberg  were discovered under today’s Simmerner Strasse.
Several layers of different building materials formed a solid foundation for the gravelled surface.
Milestones regularly informed travellers on foot, on horseback or in carriage of distances to the next settlements.
The Roman street through Kirchberg is a section of the important Ausoniusstraße leading over the Hunsrück and connecting Treves with Bingen.
In 370 A.D. the Roman poet Decimus Magnus Ausonius accompanied the emperor Gratian on a campaign against the Alemanni. On his return journey from Bingen over the Hunsrück to Treves he reported the following:
“ From Bingen I am travelling  a lonely journey through barren woods, without finding any trace of human civilisation and I am passing the arid Dumnissus (today Kirchberg) where the earth is thirsty. I am passing Tabernae irrigated by a never dwindling source, and the fields recently assigned to Sarmatian forced settlers. I am, finally, spotting – on the edge of the provincial country – Noviomagus (today Neumagen), the famous fort of the eternal Konstantin. — The air here is purer on the fields and the sun with its clear light – cloudlessly – opens the blue firmament; no longer has one to search for the sky through twisted branches as if they were tied up, the sky banished by the dark of the wood.
On the mediaeval copy of a Roman map – the Tabula Peutingeriana – the path leading from Bingen to Treves is marked.
The antique name Dumnissus does not survive in the place name Kirchberg.
Linguistically Dumnissus has survived in the name Denzen, the name of a district of Kirchberg.
It is thus not surprising that during restoration work in the Michaeliskirche traces of the Roman settlement were discovered.
While excavating a paved rear courtyard of a Roman residential building a well was detected. In the vegetable and herb gardens behind the houses carrots, beets, cabbage and lettuce were planted.
A well was also found in the district of Denzen. Roman coins and ceramics date the settlement to the first century A.D. 
To a large extent the villages along the Roman road resembled each other. Housing developments on rectangular plots of land measuring about 10m by 30 were typical of the age. The narrow side of these estates adjoined the street. Here stood a long building, the so-called Streifenhaus, with living rooms, workshop, attic/store and selling room. To the rear of the estate was a shed, a garden, a latrine and a  well.  The Latin term for the rural and small town settlements was Vicus, which originally meant ‘streetside quarters’.  The inhabitants of the Roman settlement called themselves vicani, they were innkeepers, bakers, butchers, builders, potters, cobblers, carpenters, common carriers and merchants. 
For the inhabitants of a Vicus or for those in transit there was a range of services on offer. Along the arterial roads of bigger towns could be found the equivalent of  today’s garages in which  repairs could be made  to carriages or handcarts.
With every human settlement must there be a graveyard. From Kirchberg come two stone coffers, with inscriptions, in which cremated remains from the 2nd century A. D. were found.
According to the inscription one of the deceased was by trade a coppersmith. They had had tombs constructed; one for a man and his dead brother, the other for a man and his dead wife. For the first time in the long history of Kirchberg we come across  ‘simple’ people as individuals with a name and a profession.

[Martin Thoma]