Kahler Buckel Limes Watchtower (Wp 10/33)
About
The watchtower on the Kahler Buckel held the northernmost post on this stretch of the Odenwald limes, standing 530 meters up on a bald summit that gave its garrison a clear line of sight in every direction. A dedication tablet recovered during excavation let archaeologists fix the date of one of its building phases precisely, a rarity among the frontier's hundreds of otherwise anonymous towers. A copy of that inscription now stands on the site while the original is kept in the Badisches Landesmuseum in Karlsruhe. Three superimposed sets of foundation walls, uncovered by excavation, mark where successive towers rose on the same spot.
What happened here
A small stone tower with a timber top, sited so that it can see the next one along the line. Half a dozen men live in it. They watch the ground in front, and they watch the tower on either side. A signal — fire and smoke at night, something visible by day — passes a warning down the chain far faster than a rider can, though it can only carry a message that was agreed in advance. The rest of the time it is a lookout post on a road, a river crossing or a frontier line, and the work is boredom punctuated by inspections. Supplies come up from the fort behind. Towers on a frontier stand within sight of each other for hundreds of miles.
Sources
Nearby
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