Vogelbaumhecken Limes Watchtower (Wp 10/30)
About
The watchtower known as Vogelbaumhecken took its name from the hedge-lined clearing where Roman surveyors set it along the Odenwald limes. Its garrison stood roughly midway between the towers at Kahler Buckel and Vielbrunn, filling a gap along several kilometers of forested frontier. Excavation uncovered the mound of its collapsed wooden tower and the shallow ditch that once ringed it. The post went up during the early second-century building campaign that gave the Odenwald line its full chain of towers.
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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