Roman battlefield found deep inside Germany

[nithijo]

Sounds like the Germans tried the old Teutoburger Wald ploy. I guess they didn't get the memo about those new carroballistae. Things turn out a lot different when your artillery is able to be brought into action immediately while still mounted.

I guess "they" just couldn´t imagine how the Romans should have brought their carroballistae up that hill. :wink:

On further reading it doesn't appear that they brought the artillery up the hill. They just sent the bolts up and followed up with an infantry assault. :wink: From what they say about the locations of the finds it wasn't a case of a spread out column being attacked, so no Teutoberger II. It sounds more like they drove the Germans up a hill softened them up with artillery and went in for the kill. That dovetails nicely with the assumption that this might have been part of a punative raid. More like a siege without fortifications than an open-field fight. If they were firing uphill at a steep elevation that would help explain why so many bolt heads were found. When arrows are shot upslope they tend to burrow up under the ground cover and are easily lost. When shot on level ground or downslope they usuallly wind up sticking out of the ground and are easier to find and collect. If That is what happened and these are just the ones not found, how many more might have been fired?

Om another forum this was posted:

"The state that the find
evidence (especially a coin of Commodus and a knife sheath) together
with some C-14 dating suggest a date of around 190-250AD. They
suggest that the campaign may be identified with the Germanic
campaigns of Emperor Maximinus Thrax in 235AD. The article states
that the preservation of the battlefield is so good that various
events such as infantry charges and archer volleys can be
reconstructed. The Romans also used ballistas, possibly hand-held
Scorpions.

They state that the Romans were most likely on their way back to the
south when they found their way blocked, forcing them to make their
way across these hills where the Germanic warriors confronted them.
The Romans, however, seemed to have been able to smash their way
through the Germanics using among others their ballistas. In the
process the Romans may have lost parts of their baggage train."

It looks more like the Romans were on their way back to roman controlled
territory, and that whoever they had been fighting were in good enough
shape to attempt to stop/harass/just see off the romans.

This fits the Maximinos Thrax scenario since the last trans-Rhine roman
control slipped on his watch despite him campaigning in Germania.

BTW If this was roman weapons used in intra germanic fighting you
would expect the high status gear like swords to be reworked according
to germanic taste as we see in the bog finds.

It was only the lower ranks who used unmodified roman gear.
This was probably issued to the ranks by the leaders.

Lance and spearheads used among the germanics were afaik never
made in the empire, so this could be used to settle the question
about roman presence on the site.