VISITING AUTHOR/EDITOR ARTICLE JANUARY 2009 Third Century Roman Battlefield Discovered in Northern Germany Forwarded by anonymous
The
battle would postdate the invasion of Germania by Roman legions under
Varus who was defeated in 9 A.D. by Hermann the Cheruscan and his Germanic
tribesmen in the battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
As previously reported, the newly uncovered battlefield near Kalefeld-Oldenrode,
south of Hanover, is some 124 miles northwest of the Teutoberg Forest and
appears to date to between A.D. 180-260.
Guenther Moosbauer, an expert at the University of Osnabrueck who studies
Roman-German history, said he suspects the battle might have been started by a
legion seeking revenge after tribesman in A.D. 235 pushed Roman troops south of
the Limes Germanicus, a ring of forts that separated the empire from unconquered
land to the north and east.
Until now historians had assumed that the Romans pulled back after their
ignominious deafeat at the hands of Hermann, a Roman general whose Roman name
was Arminius.
Archaeologists
have discovered an ancient Roman battlefield from the third century near Göttingen
that will rewrite history, Lower Saxony's department for preservation of
historical monuments said. “The
find can be dated to the third century and will definitely change the historical
perception of that time,” Dr. Henning Haßmann told a local newspaper.
So far historians believed that the battle of the Teutoburg Forest, which took
place in 9 AD, resulted in the Roman’s Empire withdrawal from Germania without
any further attempt to conquer the land beyond the Rhine River again.
“It is pretty normal to find evidence of Roman culture all over even up in
Scotland, but a find like this in northern Germany is really amazing,” Haßmann
said. “And it's spectacularly well preserved.”
How
did it happen?
"It never stopped beeping," said Winfried Schütte of Westerhof,
referring to his walks with his metal detector. He was accompanied bz Rolf-Peter
Dix. Their hobby is to find treasure from bygone days. Archaeologists
uncovered a third-century battlefield in northern Germany which could prove that
Roman legions were fighting in the region much later than historians have
believed.
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