My home town Houten is in the news! (Limes)

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi Stefan,

OK, I will never again put in question anything like that. I was just suspicious because of the thickness of the gravel layer. I now that any road anywhere, in any time has one of the purposes of avoiding creation of mud (to create firm ground for traffic). If the soil bellow this road is not water resistant (sandy perhaps) than I can understand why the gravel layer is so thin.

Your suspicions were correct. Not so much in the sense that it couldn't be Roman (construction-wise, that was possible), but in the sense that it's turned out to be later. In fact it's now seen as 6th to 10th c. Still mighty interesting, but it's not the Limesroad that everyone expected to find, and looked for accordingly... A lesson to us all!