Lampas - Volume 53, Issue 2, 2020

For more than five hundred years the southern part of the Netherlands belonged to the Roman Empire, more particularly to the province of Germania inferior (Lower Germany). The left bank of the river Rhine served as the external boundary of this province, once the ambition to annex the Germanic territories across the river had been abandoned. Although the Lower German Limes is only a modest part of the whole frontier system of the Roman Empire, it can boast of various distinctive characteristics, the most important of which is the outstanding preservation of timber buildings, ships and other organic remains in the water-logged conditions of the Rhine delta. This paper presents a brief history of this frontier section and addresses a few general issues, as an introduction to a series of papers discussing a variety of aspects of the frontier and of life in a frontier zone.

In the second century AD the Roman Empire reached its largest extent. By that time the military infrastructure at the periphery of the Empire stretched over thousands of kilometres, across the three continents surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. Rome had to exert its power in very different climates and landscapes, and deal with external threats varying from the highly developed Parthian Empire to hardly organised nomadic groups. The military infrastructure at its boundaries was therefore quite diverse, but nevertheless the military installations show many similarities across the Empire, due to the frequent displacements of army units and their commanders. This paper provides a concise overview of the frontier sections on all three continents and a brief discussion of differences and similarities.

From the AD 40s onwards a dense Roman military system was established along the Oude Rijn in the Netherlands. It has long been questioned why this system was established in a wetland area, and how it went on to become the northwest frontier or limes of the Roman Empire. In order to shed new light on this longstanding historical debate a detailed paleogeographical map was constructed. From the information assembled in this new map it can be concluded that this military system, which comprised a combination of forts and watchtowers, was established to watch over the river Rhine and its traffic, and to guard all waterways that gave access to the Rhine from the Germanic territories further north, and to and from the river Meuse further south to the delta.

It is clear that strategic and logistical motives determined the size and location of all of the forts and military installations in this fortified transport corridor. The construction of the series of forts from the early 40s AD onwards has been correlated with the conquest of Britain from AD 43 onwards, but the building project was initiated in the reign of Caligula (AD 37-41).

In this contribution we first explain what is referred to as infrastructure in ancient times and how ancient authors looked at this phenomenon. We also describe the sources which we have to reconstruct the infrastructural networks in the period before and during the Roman expansion in this part of Northwestern Europe. The major part of this article addresses the questions of where and when the various forms of infrastructure were built, and what they were used for in the area of the Lower Germanic Limes. We will conclude our contribution with an outline of future research on infrastructural aspects of the limes.

During the early forties AD the Roman army built several timber auxiliary forts on the southern bank of the Lower Rhine. Remains of nine timber forts and a fortlet, sometimes well preserved, have been found in the western part of the Netherlands, in the Rhine delta: at Vechten (Bunnik), Utrecht, De Meern, Woerden, Bodegraven, Zwammerdam, Alphen aan den Rijn, Leiden-Roomburg and Valkenburg (South Holland) and the fortlet at Valkenburg-Marktveld. There also are indications of military presence further upstream, but there are hardly any traces to be found. The Rhine has destroyed most of the evidence, except for dredge finds and some structures in Arnhem-Meinerswijk and Herwen-De Bijland. Wood was available in the surroundings and it was used for building the forts. In the last quarter of the second century AD most of these auxiliary forts were partly rebuilt in stone. This paper gives an overview of the recent thoughts on the Roman forts on the Lower Rhine in the Netherlands in their political context.

In the Late Roman period the Batavians disappeared from the written sources, and archaeologically speaking, nearly all rural settlements and cities of the Southern Netherlands ceased to exist, alongside the civilian centres. There is no good explanation for this depopulation but slight hints point to the population’s deportation. In the early 5th century several settlements were inhabited again. Judging by the style of the house plans, the pottery and jewelry, the inhabitants came from the area north of the Rhine. Ubiquitous gold finds in the same area imply that they were paid by the Roman government. They are called Franks in the written sources and most likely served as foederati when regular Roman troops left in 401/402.

Migration has always been a thorny issue in archaeology: based on ethnic interpretation of artefacts, arrows were drawn on maps, but theoretical objections silenced this approach, at least in theoretically-oriented archaeology. Migration can further be researched by new scientific methods (aDNA and isotope analysis of human remains); the results for the Roman period are not yet spectacular. More is expected from the analysis of settlement complexes by various methods: a) provenancing pottery by geochemical and mineralogical analysis, b) combined with stylistic study; c) isotopic analysis of associated animal bones, to see whether the animals were brought on the hoof over long distances; d) stylistic analysis of the house plan, and e) plotting the circulation area of the metal jewelry. This combination can ascertain whether the inhabitants of settlements were migrants originally and how quick they adapted to their new environment.

The Roman period in the history of Nijmegen starts in 19 BC with the construction of a large military camp on the Hunerberg and ends with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD. During this period of nearly 500 years the dynamic history of Nijmegen and the surrounding Batavian area was partly determined by well-considered decisions made by Roman emperors and their army commanders in the province. In addition, incoming Germanic tribes, rebelling Romans and natural events such as climate change and two pandemics each determined the course of this history in its own unique way. Since 1914 archaeological research within the municipal boundaries has uncovered the remains of various military fortresses and smaller camps, urban settlements, small hamlets, burial grounds and an aqueduct. The results of these excavations unravel parts of the history of the oldest city in the Netherlands, but much is still awaiting discovery in the Nijmegen soil and in the archaeological depots.

This paper presents the current state of knowledge on food supply to the Roman Limes, vici and towns in the Netherlands – based on archaeobotanical and archaeozoological research – and the role of the local countryside. For the first century AD, several areas of origin for the food can be established. Cereals were imported, but also supplied from the regions adjacent to the Rhine; pulses and oil seeds may have been sourced locally. Cattle were both imported and obtained locally. Population density in the countryside was low and farmers were not used to structurally producing surplus food. In the earliest phase, the army probably requisitioned cattle and raised pigs and chickens. From the late first century, supply was organised better and the local farmers supplied more of the cereals and meat required by the army, vici and towns. However, certain cereals were still imported. Orchards and vegetable gardens were located near the towns, where chickens were also raised. Throughout the Roman period, wild fruits and hazelnuts could be gathered and game, wild birds and fish hunted by consumers. Saltwater fish and seashells indicate trade with coastal regions. Wine, olive oil, fish sauce, preserved fruits, pine nuts, preserved meat and fish were imported from other provinces.

The subject of this article is the interaction between the military and civilian communities in the Dutch Limes zone. Central questions are what influence the Roman army had on the civilian population, how the contacts between both groups were shaped, and how the individual soldiers interacted with civilians. The influence of the army was most prominent at the forts, but was also present outside the areas where the military was stationed. Civilians enlisted in the army, creating intermediaries. The Roman cities also functioned as transition points between the army and the civilian population, but they may have had other, more primary military functions as well. Contacts between the two groups were generally peaceful and provided benefits for both. As military and civilian communities became increasingly intertwined, it is likely that individual contacts between the two also contributed to this process.

The forts and surrounding villages situated on the Lower German Limes were inhabited by people with very diverse ethno-cultural backgrounds. They came from all corners of the Roman Empire, and beyond, to the north-western frontier. In this article four case studies are put in the spotlight to illustrate the high rate of cultural diversity among these military communities.

It is in the nature of the Dutch Limes, buried as it is under later river sediments and modern townscapes, that it is fundamentally invisible. Over the past fifteen years, a surge of local initiatives to create Roman references and replicas in our public spaces has gone a long way to make up for this. Many of these ‘emperor’s new clothes’ have been styled in a bold new language of ‘Dutch design’, giving a distinct imprint to this corner of the Frontiers of the Roman Empire. The flipside of the Dutch approach, typically averse to central coordination, could be a lack of coherence and sustained management. This paper will draw up an interim balance sheet. After a cycle tour along the Dutch Limes sector we will look into two major recent endeavours of public outreach: the Zwammerdam ships project with its twin hubs of the NIGRVM PVLLVM visitor centre and the Archeon museum park at Zwammerdam and Alphen aan den Rijn, respectively, and the making of Castellum Hoge Woerd at Utrecht, a true to scale replica of the local Roman fort. The paper concludes with some of the most urgent lessons learnt.