Vielbrunn Limes Watchtower "Bei Vielbrunn" (Wp 10/16)
About
A second watchtower, Wp 10/16, stood barely half a kilometer from its neighbor at Im Oberen Haspel, part of the dense chain of posts the Roman army planted along the Odenwald frontier road. Its garrison watched a stretch of forest where the hills broke direct sightlines between the larger stations, closing a gap in the signal chain. Excavators found the telltale mound of its collapsed wooden tower along with the low ring bank that once surrounded it. The tower belonged to the same building push that Trajan's engineers carried through the Odenwald in the frontier's opening decade.
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
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 →