I haven’t been able to log in for the last couple of days, but there is quite a bit more information now available. First of all, this article has some info and some good pictures. Our local paper has been covering this pretty heavily (like half a page to a page every day) with commentary from various experts.

Now that the site has been more precisely located for the public, I can say that it is somewhere near Wiershausen, which is a village belonging to Kalefeld in Lower Saxony. (Aulus, it’s Lower Saxony, not Saxony. Big difference.) The site is in the western foothills of the Harz mountains.

The battle is being dated to between AD 180 and 250. There is a coin from the reign of Commodus which offers a terminus ad quem. I’m not sure where they are getting their upper date, but apparently the most likely time is somewhat later in the range. At least one archaeologist is very specific and says the reign of Maximinus Thrax is the most likely time.

The preliminary reconstruction of events goes like this: Upward of 1,000 Romans were marching south (!) through the area and found one of the few passes occupied, so they went over the top of the hill instead. They faced strong opposition and were able to win thanks to their superior technology, most notably the scorpions. Despite their success, however, they were forced to swing westwards into the valley of the Leine.

The find raises a number of interesting questions:

1. What were the Romans doing here in the first place? The general assumption has always been that, after Augustus pulled back following the Varus disaster, the Romans never went very far beyond the limes. This site is several hundred miles from the nearest point on the limes.

2. Why didn’t the Germans go back and plunder the battlefield? The amount of material is astonishing. In just 3 short months of excavation, over 600 artifacts were found. There was plenty that the Germans could have made use of, but they never came back.

There is going to be a lot of work done here in the next few years and it may very well rewrite some of the history books.