Romans in Germany
Hachelbich
A Roman marching camp from the 1st to 3rd century A.D. has been discovered near the town
of Hachelbich in Thuringia. It’s the first Roman military camp found in the eastern German
province and the first camp that is more than a day’s travel from the eastern border of the
empire on the Rhine. In fact, it’s closer to the Elbe River than it is to the Rhine (the Elbe is
about 150 miles east of the site, the Rhine 220 west), a strong indication that the Roman
military did not completely withdraw to the Rhine even after three legions led by Publius
Quintilius Varus were slaughtered by Germanic tribesmen at the Battle of Teutoburg Forest in
9 A.D.
The discovery of a large third century battlefield on Harzhorn hill in Lower Saxony in 2008
confirmed that there was a significant Roman military presence east of the Teutoburg Forest
more than 200 years after Varus’ humiliating defeat. Archaeologists estimate about 1,000
Roman soldiers fought (and won) at Harzhorn. The Hachelbich marching camp is about 60
miles southeast of Harzhorn. It covers 18 hectares and was large enough to accommodate an
entire legion of around 5,000 soldiers. As a marching camp, it wasn’t a permanent fortress,
but rather a protective enclosure built by the legionaries in one evening so they could camp
down in a defended position. They wouldn’t have spent more than a few days there while on
their way elsewhere, in this case probably east towards the Elbe.
The site was found in 2010 during road work, but it was kept quiet while archaeologists
explored the area. They excavated more than two hectares and covered another 10 hectares
with magnetometers and aerial surveys. Now that the site has been identified as a military
camp, the Thuringian State Office for Heritage and Archaeology has announced the find.
They’re keeping the exact location a secret, however, to keep looters from ravaging the place
on the hunt for portable Roman artifacts.
A rough rectangle with round corners, the camp is standard Roman military issue. No matter
where they were, legions on the move set up a minifortress in the wilderness at the end of
each day’s march. At Hachelbich, the meter-deep trenches dug around the camp were the
easiest feature to spot in the soil. Two perimeter trenches have been found, each more than
400 meters long.
On the camp’s northern edge, the soldiers built a gate protected by another trench that
projected out past the perimeter. “It’s typically Roman—no Germans did that sort of thing,”
Kuessner says. The trenches were part of a simple, but effective makeshift perimeter defense:
A low wall of dirt was thrown up behind the trench, then topped with tall stakes, to create a
defensive barrier almost 3 meters wide and 3 meters high. Erosion wiped away the wall long
ago, but it left discolorations in the soil where the trench was dug.
Archaeologists also unearthed the remains of eight bread ovens close to the camp perimeter,
which shows an impressive commitment to quality food considering the legionaries weren’t
going to be there for long. Some artifacts confirming the military nature of the camp were
found: four hobnails from the soles of Roman caligae, fittings from a sword scabbard and
horse tackle.
The style of the artifacts places the camp in the first two centuries of the first millennium and
radiocarbon dating supports the range, but archaeologists haven’t found anything to narrow it
down any further or link to the camp to the reign of a certain emperor. Excavations will
continue this year and the next at least. After the crops in the valley are harvested this fall,
archaeologists will be able to excavate the farmland. They hope to find coins that will provide
a precise date, or an artifact with the legion number on it that would write a new chapter in
Roman military history.
Harzhorn
After Rome lost 3 legions to Germanic tribes united under Ariminius, aka Hermann, in the 9
A.D. Battle of Teutoborg forest, Augustus ordered that troops withdraw to the Rhine, and
there the border stayed pretty much without exception until the empire crumbled.
Germanicus made some incursions past the Rhine 5 years later, but basically historians
thought Teutoborg marked the end of a strong Roman military presence east of the Rhine.
Those assumptions now gang agley because archaeologists have found a massive 3rd century
Roman battlefield south of Hannover way east of the Rhine, even east of the Teutoborg site.
A Roman force mounted a punitive raid deep inside the tribal areas in AD 235, suggesting
that a soldier-emperor, Maximinus Thrax, seriously attempted to subjugate the north of
Germany.
The debris from the battle is scattered over a wooded hill, the Harzhorn.
An archeological dig there this summer turned up 1,800 artefacts. A single spot on the hill had
been pounded by torsion catapults, one of the most advanced weapons in the Roman arsenal,
and 70 bolts from these armour-piercing weapons were still lying in the ground. The
catapults, mounted on wagons, had a range of up to 200 metres, said Michael Moosbauer, an
archaeology at the Harzhorn site. The iron points weighed 200 grams apiece.
The Romans' supremacy was also partly based on the varied skills in their multi-ethnic army.
Among the auxiliaries they employed on the Harzhorn were Moroccan javelin men and
Middle Eastern archers.
The Roman historian Herodian says that Maximinus laid waste to the whole country,
destroying crops, burning down villages after allowing the army to plunder them, and stealing
cattle from the Germanic 'barbarians.'
So far metal detector enthusiasts and archaeologists have uncovered over 600 artifacts over a
mile of forest, including spear points, arrows, axe heads, wagon parts, sandal nails, coins,
even hippo-sandals, a kind of rudimentary horse shoe.
The specialized artillery and hundreds of Roman sandal nails found atop Harzhorn Hill is a
good indication the combatants were Romans, not barbarians using Roman weapons. Roman
artifacts have been found as far north as the Baltic Sea, but have usually been dismissed as
trade goods. “Roman sandals on German feet don’t make sense, at least not in that amount,”
says Friedrich Lueth, head of the German Archaeological Institute’s Roman German
Commission. “At this late stage, it’s quite surprising to see them so far north.”
The artifacts weren’t strewn willy-nilly. The spear points are almost all facing the same
direction, so archaeologists have been able to map troop movements during the battle.
Not only did the thousand or so Romans win in something like 30 minutes, but they came
from the north, so they were even deeper into Germanic territory before the fight.