Projects: Geographical Overview
The Marcomannic Wars – Archaeological Findings and Historical Interpretation
Selected Case Studies in the Danube and South-Eastern Alpine Region (Austria, Slovenia)
The correlation of data from historical events with archaeological finds, and their interpretation, has been a central research concern since the inception of provincial archaeology.
Reflections concerning the effects of the Marcomannic Wars (166–180 A.D.) on the Roman period settlement landscape in Noricum and Pannonia form the focus of the posing of questions in this area of provincial archaeology.
Older archaeological research presumed, in part conjecturally, that there was far-reaching devastation in the Roman settlements at the time of the Marcomannic Wars, in particular along the Amber Road and in its hinterland. More recent provincial Roman research has only been able to confirm this picture in a limited fashion, or to qualify it. How severe the effects of the Marcomannic Wars on the Danube and south-eastern Alpine regions actually were (collateral damage?) and whether destruction levels of the third quarter of the 2nd century A.D. can always be related back to the Marcomannic Wars as a monocausal explanatory model, is, as before, open to discussion and not yet completely clarified.
The dynamic events of the time, recorded in historical sources (destruction of Opitergium and besieging of Aquileia, recruiting of Legio II and III Italica as well as the establishment of the Ad praetenturam Italiae et Alpium) are confronted with the remains of material culture documented with the methods of provincial archaeology (contemporary burned layers and destruction levels).
A key position within research undertakings in this region is occupied by the destruction level dating to the third quarter of the 2nd century A.D. discovered in the Insula XLI of Flavia Solva (Wagna, Styria). As a so-called dated, sealed stratum or closed find, this destruction level is of great importance for research, since it offers a snapshot of the material culture of the Antonine period.
The linking of these findings with provincial archaeological research on the military camps of Albing (Lower Austria) and Ločica (Slovenia), both occupied for a short time and both closely connected to the Marcomannic Wars and the history of Legio II Italica, should round out the picture. In the framework of cooperative research with the Institute for Mediterranean Heritage of the University in Koper (M. Guštin and I. Lazar) and the Pokrajinski muzej Celje (J. Krajšek) in Slovenia, as well as with the Bundesdenkmalamt Niederösterreich (M. Krenn), the camps of the Legio II Italica located at Ločica and Albing will be investigated by means of geophysical surveys and the reprocessing of excavations. Both of these military camps were set up before the construction of the legionary camp in Lauriacum in 191 A.D. and were only used for a few years. The goal of the project is to obtain new information regarding the intensity of building development within the camp, until now not yet known, and the relationship of the camp to its immediate environment. Subsequently, these new results will be compared to those from the legionary camp in Lauriacum on the Norican Danube limes.
The civilian component, to be illustrated after the evaluation of the finds from Flavia Solva, will be supplemented with the evaluation of the finds from both of the military camps around the contemporary military element. The sweep of the research project, as far as its content and theme is concerned, therefore extends from the probable effects of the Marcomannic Wars on the civilian population along the Amber Road and its hinterland, to the countermeasures carried out by the Roman military leadership in the hinterland and along the Danube.
Bibliography
- S. Groh, Die Insula XLI von Flavia Solva. Ergebnisse der Grabungen 1959 und 1989 bis 1992, SoSchrÖAI 28 (Wien 1996).
- H. Petrovitsch, Legio II Italica, FiL 13 (Linz 2006).