Roman “god pillar” remains found at open-air museum in Germany

More than 100 fragments from a Roman votive monument have been discovered on the grounds of the Hechingen-Stein Roman Open-Air Museum. Archaeologists with the State Office for Monument Preservation (LAD) in Stuttgart found the remains of a rare “god pillar” in an excavation of a Roman estate from the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D.

“The monument must originally have consisted of several stone blocks placed on top of each other,” reported Dr. Klaus Kortüm, archaeologist at the LAD, at the public presentation in the open-air museum. “The blocks are decorated with reliefs on all sides, showing ancient gods and figures from the associated legends. In post-Roman times, the monument was broken up into large and small individual pieces and scattered. Only parts of the figures can be recognized on them, and they can often only be identified using better-preserved parallels,” said Kortüm. […]

According to the archaeologist, comparable god pillars have rarely been found in the Roman border provinces on the Rhine and Danube. According to initial findings, the Hechingen specimen must have been quite large in comparison.

The pieces that have been found form only a fraction of the original monument. There is too much damage and too much missing for the pieces to be puzzled back together. The archaeological team is creating small-scale replicas using a 3D printer. They will be reassembled and the blanks filled in with hypothetical reconstructions. When the model is complete, it will go on display at the open-air museum with the original stones in a new permanent exhibition.

* This article was originally published here