Schneidershecke Limes Watchtower (Wp 10/37a)
About
The watchtower at Schneidershecke guarded a bend in the Odenwald limes near Mudau, its garrison watching the forest below for movement along the frontier. Roman engineers set it into a chain of towers running the line at intervals of a few hundred meters, close enough that a lit beacon or a shout could carry from post to post. The tower began as a wooden structure typical of the frontier's earliest building phase before a later rebuilding in stone. Its buried foundations still lie under the forest floor near the modern hiking route that traces the ancient patrol road.
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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