ABSTRACT
The discovery of the grave of the Frankish king Childeric I in Tournai in 1653 marks the beginning of Merovingian archaeology. Its nature and contents have never ceased to excite interest and debate over the subsequent three and a half centuries, in spite of the loss of most of the artifacts in 1831. As has long been recognized, however, Gregory's knowledge of Clovis was sketchy and his chronology of the reign entirely artificial. Thirty years was a convenient and appropriate length for the reign of a great king, with suitable biblical precedent. Were the Tournai grave assigned to the traditional date of ca.481, one would have to say that furnished burial had not been common in the preceding half-century. Cutting away the spuriously precise date given to the burial inevitably results in the loss of the possibility of being too exact about the grave's context.
