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We covered Roman frontiers in Britain, Jordan, Egypt, and the Neverlands... We thought its time for the largest one; the Rhine frontier! It is often said that Augustus founded and built the Roman border with the Rhine, that he installed stone forts along it, and that it was an unshakable border meant to repel any invasion. This video aims to dispel the above myths and shed some light on Roman borders. It wasn't one emperor who built it, it took decades for the wooden forts to slowly become permanent stone ones, and the border was very dynamic network that shifted...

The Celts of the La Tène civilization, who were prosperous in the late Iron Age around 450 BC, lived in the settlement until 1000 AD. The Celtic peoples first inhabited the area that is now Bavaria, but the Romans eventually overcame them and integrated it into their empire.During an archaeological investigation as part of the development of a new residential area, an above-average number of house plans from former settlements were discovered. These post holes, now visible as circles in the gravel, are the last remains of individual mine houses. They provide impressive evidence that around 500 people lived in...

Following archaeological investigations in the Hessian Ried, initial indications show the canal may have been dug much earlier than previously estimated: It is thought the Roman military created the artificial body of water during the conquest and development of the Ried, located on the right bank of the Rhine, in the 1st century AD. The land ditch, which merged into today's Schwarzbach stream near Trebur, probably served to supply materials and goods to the Roman fort and its nearby civilian settlement in Gross-Gerau. With the new funds in hand, further research is now getting underway...Both written records and corresponding findings...

A chance discovery is shedding new light on early Norse history, after two old school-friends, armed only with a metal detector stumbled across a gold treasure trove.More than 20 gold artefacts, weighing almost a kilo, were found buried in a field in the Danish village of Vindelev. Hidden for almost 1,500 years, the treasure includes Roman medallions and ornate pendants called 'bracteates' - some as large as a saucer.There are mysterious inscriptions and never-seen-before runes, which researchers think are some of the earliest references to Norse gods.So could Vindelev have been the seat of power for a previously unknown Iron...

Oldest Roman body armour found in Germany Archaeologists have discovered the oldest and most complete Roman body armour at the site of the  Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in Kalkriese, Germany. Before this find, the earliest known examples of Roman lorica segmentata — iron plate sections tied together — were found in Corbridge, UK, and date to the 2nd century. Those were fragments. The Kalkriese armor is a complete set, and includes an extremely rare iron collar used to shackle prisoners.More than 7,000 objects have been found at the Kalkriese battlefield site, from weapons to coins to items of everyday...

A farmer has discovered one of the largest hauls of Roman coins to ever be found in Poland. Mariusz Dyl had been looking for abandoned antlers in a field near Cichobórz, south of Hrubieszów, Lublin, when he stumbled upon the 2,000-year-old coins scattered across 100 metres of the field. After calling in experts, the 1,753 coins weighing 5.5kg and which were found in 2019, were taken to the Hrubieszów Museum where they have now been analysed and their authenticity confirmed. Director of the Museum Bartlomiej Bartecki said... all the coins, had been originally placed in a wooden box or leather...

Village from the Roman period, dating from 3rd-4th century AD, has been discovered in Lipnica Dolna near Jasło (Subcarpathia). Among approx. one thousand archaeological objects there is a large pottery kiln, in which ceramics were fired. "The kiln is two meters in length and the same in width. It stands on a small tip in the Wisłoka valley. Its location shows that the wind blowing from the river was used to maintain the temperature during the firing cycle" - said Tomasz Leszczyński, archaeologist from the Subcarpathian Museum in Krosno. He added that "such kilns are extremely rare in the Carpathians"....

Dozens of cremation graves dating to around 400 AD; the start of the Great Migration period, are being studied at Łężany, northeastern Poland, by a team from the Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw... The burial ground was discovered accidentally in Autumn 2012 during forestry work with the initial excavations starting last year. The necropolis consisted of single graves with exclusively cremated human remains, the ashes were interred directly in the ground in either shallow scoops or in earthenware burial urns. Archaeologists have also located small clusters of human bones deposited in pure sand... Uniquely for this region four cicada...

Triumph of the Polish will Krakow remains a medieval Polish showpiece for all modern visitors to relish and enjoy. By TOM COCKREM Miracles do happen. Most Polish people would attest avidly to this. And for evidence, they need only cite their own backyard. For in the southern part of Poland there exists the town of Krakow. Like its historic sister cities – Warsaw, Wroclaw, Gdansk and others – it dates back a thousand years. But unlike them, its precious centre has survived almost intact, despite numerous attempts to bring it down. It remains a medieval Polish showpiece for all us...

The wooden shield has rotted and no image remains, but fragments of paint could be detected, says Christian-Heinrich Wunderlich, the head of the restoration workshop at the Landesmuseum in Halle. Under a microscope, the pigments were identified as "Egyptian blue", which was widely used in the Roman Empire, and vermilion, which was only available in a few Mediterranean locations at that time. "These pigments were not cheap and must have been Roman imports," Wunderlich says. Examinations under the microscope revealed that the paints were applied in layers, and that the wood was prepared with a chalk and lime base to...

The name of the Roman emperor Maximinus Thrax, who ruled from 235 to 238 CE, was deciphered for the first time on a milestone which was used to mark ancient Roman roads, according to the latest study of the area of ​​ancient Sussita (Hippos) carried out by researchers from the University of Haifa. This is the first inscription that researchers have been able identify on the milestones marking the road from Susita east of the Sea of ​​Galilee to Banias (Panias, named after the god Pan) in the southern Golan Heights. According to Dr. Michael Eisenberg of the Institute of...

The unique discovery at the east end of Lake Mossø of a slaughtered army dating to around two thousand years ago, was revealed by Danish archaeologists in 2009. They had found skeletal material from up to 200 warriors, who may have all come from the same battle. Cuts and slashes on the skeletons showed they had died violently but nothing is as yet known about the identity of the killers, or their victims. In February this year it was announced that the Carlsberg Foundation has granted 1.5 million DKK for further research and excavations in Alken Wetlands. Archaeologists and other...

In the vicinity of Hermeskeil, a small town some 30 kilometers southeast of the city of Trier in the Hunsrueck region in the German federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate, archaeologists from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have confirmed the location of the oldest Roman military fortification known in Germany to date. These findings shed new light on the Roman conquest of Gaul. The camp was presumably built during Julius Caesars’ Gallic War in the late 50s B.C. Nearby lies a late Celtic settlement with monumental fortifications known as the "Hunnenring" or "Circle of the Huns," which functioned as one of the...

Archaeologists from Aarhus University and Southwest Jutland Museums (Denmark) have been excavating... down to three metres... Thousands of items discovered beneath the streets of Ribe... everything from beads, amulets, coins, and lost combs, to dog excrement and gnawed bones... a piece of a lyre (a harp-like stringed instrument), complete with tuning pegs. This discovery alone gives the Viking trading city of Ribe a whole new soundtrack.Another extraordinary find is the discovery of runic inscriptions...The people who lived here weren't primarily farmers for household purposes but were craftsmen, seafarers, tradesmen, innkeepers, and maybe even lyrists...The early period of Ribe is a...

The settlement covered nearly 20 acres and had a defensive wall but no military buildings. Its existence shows that the Romans were living next to and trading with German "barbarians" peacefully for years, right up until the Teutoburg defeat, according to lead researcher Gabriele Rasbach of the German Archaeological Institute. Most of the settlement’s buildings were made of wood, and based on tree-ring data, archaeologists say the town was built from scratch beginning in 4 B.C. Behind 10-foot-tall timber walls, Waldgirmes had pottery and woodworking workshops, Roman-style residences, and even traces of lead plumbing. A multistory administrative building sat at...

The remains of the oldest public library in Germany, a building erected almost two millennia ago that may have housed up to 20,000 scrolls, have been discovered in the middle of Cologne. The walls were first uncovered in 2017, during an excavation on the grounds of a Protestant church in the centre of the city. Archaeologists knew they were of Roman origins, with Cologne being one of Germany's oldest cities, founded by the Romans in 50 AD under the name Colonia. But the discovery of niches in the walls, measuring approximately 80cm by 50cm, was, initially, mystifying... "But what they...

Thousands of bones from boys and men likely killed in a ferocious battle 2,000 years ago have been unearthed from a bog in Denmark, researchers said Monday. Without local written records to explain, or a battlefield to scour for evidence, experts are nevertheless piecing together a story... Four pelvic bones strung on a stick were among the remains of at least 82 people found during archaeological excavations at Alken Enge in Jutland... The more than 2,300 human bones were contained in peat and lake sediments over 185 acres (75 hectares) of wetland meadows. Radiocarbon-dating put them between 2 BC and...

Roman soldiers were present in the area of Kujawy 2 thousand years ago. This is evidenced by discovered fragments of equestrian gear and legionnaire outfits. Many of them were discovered for the first time outside the borders of the Roman Empire, says Dr. Bartosz Kontny. "Among the many donated metal objects there were also numerous fittings made of copper alloy, which turned out to be decorations for equestrian gear and Roman legionaries` clothing, many of them unique in this part of Europe" -- says Dr. Bartosz Kontny from the Institute of Archaeology, University of Warsaw, who identified the objects... "This...

A new archaeological find on the Danish island of Falster can be traced back to the first Roman Emperor, Augustus. A bronze figure representing the Greek figure Silenus, from the time of Rome's first emperor, Augustus, has been found on the south-eastern Danish island of Falster. This find suggests that there was close contact between the Roman empire and Scandinavia, before and after the emperor's reign... At first sight the figure seemed so finely detailed that the finder took it home in the belief that it was a modern object. Later she handed it over to the National Museum of...

Dutch archaeologists have recently completed the rescue excavation of a unique treasure hoard dating to the beginning of the 5th century AD, from a field in Limburg... According to the Byzantine historian Zosimus, Constantine III tried to re-secure the entire Roman Rhine frontier against Germanic invaders... The historians Orosius and Zosimus tells us that Constantine III solved the problem of the invading Germanic groups by liberal use of the money bag along with developing close alliances to Germanic warlords on both sides of the Rhine... The Echt hoard would therefore have belonged to a Germanic officer in Roman service –...