The ancient Romans did not protect military objects with barbed wire, but with sharpened wooden poles: as "proximity obstacles" they were intended to make attacks more difficult. Ancient defense technology was previously known from reports, for example by Julius Caesar. Such constructions have not yet been found, writes the University of Frankfurt – but now students of the university have come across them during a teaching excavation led by their professor Markus Scholz and his colleague Frederic Auth near Bad Ems. In recent years, the budding archaeologists and historians have uncovered two previously unknown military camps and discovered remains of their fortifications.

Sascha Zoske

Blattmacher in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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The larger of the two camps had about 40 wooden towers and an area of about eight hectares. Probably about 3000 soldiers were accommodated in tents; The plant was never completed. A second, smaller camp probably held about 40 men. It was surrounded by a pointed ditch, in the walls of which the wooden skewers were stuck. The students also found there a coin from the year 43, which proves that the camp was not created in connection with the construction of the Limes. It had previously been assumed that a Roman ironworks had stood on this site.

Both plants have apparently been abandoned after only a few years by their builders. It is possible that the Romans had built it to secure the mining of silver ore: The historian Tacitus reported that the Roman governor Curtius Rufus had failed in this area around the year 47 in his attempt to extract the valuable raw material in larger quantities from the ground.

In fact, the Frankfurt students came across a tunnel during their excavations. However, the Romans were discouraged too quickly: Only a few meters below the tunnel were 200 tons of silver, which were mined in later centuries.