Roman camp Bielefeld-Sennestadt

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Coordinates: 51 ° 57 ′ 10 ″  N , 8 ° 38 ′ 3 ″  E

Relief map: North Rhine-Westphalia
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Roman camp Bielefeld-Sennestadt​
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North Rhine-Westphalia

The Roman camp Bielefeld-Sennestadt was a marching camp that the Romans had set up around the time of the birth of Christ in what is now the Bielefeld districts of Sennestadt and Stieghorst in North Rhine-Westphalia . It offered space for up to 25,000 Roman soldiers on an area of ​​around 26 hectares . In 2017, a hobby researcher discovered the warehouse based on its surrounding earth wall on lidar scans on the Internet.

location

Sketch of the location of the Roman camp in Bielefeld-Sennestadt with today's network of trails
The former camp area, in the background the ridge of the Teutoburg Forest with a pass (right)

The Roman camp Bielefeld-Sennestadt is located in the landscape of the Oerlinghausener Senne on a gently sloping terrain on the southern slope of the Teutoburg Forest . Above the camp, a pass leads along the Menkhauser Bach over the mountain ridge . Apart from an approximately five hectare clearing , the storage area is wooded, which goes back to a reforestation in the 19th century. During the presence of the Romans around the time of the birth of Christ, a light birch-oak forest was likely to have prevailed in the area with the Podzolboden and stone formation .

The former storage area is located west of the valley of the Menkhauser Bach, the course of which forms today's Bielefeld city boundary to the city of Oerlinghausen in the Lippe district. The camp was north of the Senner Hellweg . This was an approximately 30 km long section of the Westphalian Hellweg , which already existed in the Bronze Age and connected the Rhine and Weser in Germanic up to medieval times .

Today the warehouse is on the border between two Bielefeld city districts. The smaller southern part, on which the Haus Neuland educational facility is located, belongs to the Sennestadt district. The larger northern part of the camp is in the Lämershagen-Graefinghagen district in the Stieghorst district.

description

The camp was polygonal in shape. It was surrounded on three sides by an earth wall with a Roman pointed moat in front . The east side of the camp secured the slope edge, which sloped several meters to the valley of the Menkhauser Bach, as a natural obstacle to the approach. Originally the wall was around 60 cm high and around two to three meters wide. It consisted of the excavated earth material from the Spitz trench in front of it. This was about 80 cm deep and about 1.5 meters wide. The wall has been preserved over a length of 1400 meters at a height of up to 40 cm. The Spitzgraben was filled in after the system was in use due to the weather and the inundation of soil material.

Excavation cut through the wall

Access to the camp was via two gates in the wall, which were located on the northeast and northwest sides. They were so-called clavicle gates, the name of which is derived from the Latin word clavicula for collarbone . With this gate shape, the wall was pivoted inwards at the height of the gate, creating a narrow and more easily defended entrance area. In conjunction with wooden wall spears that were planted on the wall and connected to cables, the system provided protection against raids and wildlife.

Research history

Excavation work on the camp wall, 2019
The exposed ditch (light gray) in front of the wall, 2019

In 2017, the Dutch hobby researcher René Jansen Venneboer discovered the Bielefeld-Sennestadt Roman camp while looking for traces of Roman campaigns in the North Rhine-Westphalian region. To do this, he used lidar scans made available by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia via the TIM-online internet service . The scans depict a digital terrain model based on airborne laser scanning images. Structures that are hidden by vegetation also become visible on the earth's surface. In this way, the hobby researcher was able to see a continuous polygonal line under trees and bushes in the forest area of ​​the Senne, which stood out from modern structures. Because of its shape and size in connection with the two interruptions, which he interpreted as clavicle gates, he thought the line was the wall of a Roman camp. After an on-site inspection, he reported his suspicion to the Rhineland Regional Association , which forwarded the information to the Westphalia-Lippe Regional Association responsible. LWL Archeology for Westphalia then carried out systematic prospecting on the area in question and carried out two smaller excavation cuts on the south side of the camp in September 2018 and May 2019 . They confirmed the assumption that the rampart structure with a V-shaped pointed ditch in front was the remains of a Roman camp. In September 2019, the archaeologists expanded one of their excavation sections.

The archaeological investigations so far (September 2019) have not uncovered any finds that could be used to date the complex. Coins , pieces of equipment and the remains of field ovens are to be expected from Roman legacies . With the involvement of voluntary helpers, further prospections and excavations are planned, which should continue for years. The Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe is planning to protect the area of ​​the former Roman camp by designating it as a soil monument . The search for finds there without a permit is already a robbery that is subject to prosecution.

presentation

Public announcement of the discovery at a press conference of the LWL archeology for Westphalia near the site in Haus Neuland , 2019
First presentation of the excavation to the press, 2019

The monument authorities announced the discovery to archaeological experts at a meeting in March 2019 in Münster , while the general public was informed about it in May 2019.

After the discovery was publicly announced, LWL Archeology offered guided tours of the excavation site in May 2019, which attracted great interest with over 500 visitors. The Regional Association of Westphalia-Lippe is considering making the site accessible to tourists, although a collaboration with the Oerlinghausen Archaeological Open-Air Museum is likely. This should be done digitally. From 2021, a theme of the discovered Roman camp is planned for the state exhibition in the Lippisches Landesmuseum in Detmold.

Significance and historical classification

According to the researchers at LWL Archeology for Westphalia, the camp in Westphalia is unique because large parts of its approximately 2000-year-old storage wall are still visible in the area today. In contrast to other systems of this type, there was no modern overprint on the area due to large-scale development, agriculture or pest control , which would have destroyed the surface structures.

According to the responsible Roman provincial archaeologist Bettina Tremmel from LWL Archeology for Westphalia, the camp with its wall-ditch system is typical of Roman marching camps . It offered space for three legions with auxiliary troops and the entourage , which corresponds to a troop strength of around 25,000 people. The system may have been used several times. The camp offered the legionnaires a good water supply due to its location on a stream that carried water all year round and enabled them to cross the Teutoburg Forest through a pass above.

The discovery of the camp is seen as an important element in describing the routes that the Romans took from the Lippe to the Cheruscan settlement area on the Weser. It was about 23 km from the Roman camp Anreppen an der Lippe, which corresponded to a day's march. The Roman camp Porta Westfalica in what is now Barkhausen was two days' march away from the location of the marching camp near Sennestadt , so that there could be another marching camp that had not yet been found in between. The archaeologists suspect this due to the legionnaires' daily marching distance of about 20 kilometers halfway to the Weser near Löhne . Until the discovery of the camp near Sennestadt, the archaeologists had suspected a marching camp near the Bielefelder Pass to cross the Teutoburg Forest , in the vicinity of which the Roman circular moat was found on the Sparrenberger Egge .

The researchers do not yet know which military event led to the establishment of the march. They attribute it to the Augustan German Wars and roughly date it to the period between 1 and 16 AD, as the dimensions, the shape and the clavicle gates speak for.

Web links

Commons : Römerlager Bielefeld-Sennestadt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Roman camp in Bielefeld discovered at Bild der Wissenschaft on May 9, 2019
  2. ↑ New find of a Roman marcher in Bielefeld at the Westphalia-Lippe Regional Association on May 8, 2019
  3. ↑ a b c Peter Bollig: Searching for traces in the Roman marching camp in Westfalen-Blatt from September 10, 2019
  4. ↑ LWL archeology discovers a 2000 year old marching camp , in: Westfälische Nachrichten of May 9, 2019.
  5. ↑ a b Susanne Lahr: Bielefeld residents can now visit the Roman camp , in: Neue Westfälische from May 10, 2019.
  6. ↑ Guided tours with an archaeologist in: Neue Westfälische on May 8, 2019.
  7. ↑ Roman marching camp near Bielefeld-Sennestadt discovered at logistik-des-varus.de on March 11, 2019.
  8. ↑ Ingo Kalischek: Unique find in Westphalia: Roman camp discovered in Bielefeld , in: Lippische Landeszeitung from May 2, 2019.
  9. ↑ Sibylle Kemna: The Roman camp in Bielefeld is so exciting , in: Neue Westfälische from May 13, 2019.
  10. ↑ Bielefeld Roman Camp is to be digitally brought to life in: Neue Westfälische from 6 July 2020.
  11. ↑ Roman marching camp in Bielefeld discovered at archeologie-online on May 8, 2019.
  12. ↑ a b c Susanne Lahr: Unique in Westphalia: This is what the Roman camp in Bielefeld looks like , in: Neue Westfälische from May 8, 2019.
  13. ↑ Where the Romans stopped: lay researcher makes great discovery on n-tv on May 8, 2019