Limeshain Limes Watchtower "Eckartshäuser Unterwald" (Wp 4/103)
About
Watchtower Wp 4/103 stood in the Eckartshäuser Unterwald forest south of what is now Limeshain-Rommelhausen, one link in the Wetterau chain of the Upper Germanic limes. Excavators could still trace both its wooden and stone tower sites side by side in the terrain, a rare look at how a single post was rebuilt over time. The first timber tower went up around 100 CE as Trajan's army pushed the Wetterau frontier into permanent form. A reconstructed stone tower, raised to a height of 11.46 meters and inaugurated in 2013, now marks the spot using construction methods drawn directly from the excavation.
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.
In ancient writing
- Historia Augusta, Life of Hadrian 12.6
Describes Hadrian separating Roman territory from barbarian lands in regions without a river boundary by driving great timber stakes into the ground and binding them into a continuous palisade, the building program to which this stretch of the Germanic limes belonged.
Sources
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →