Evidence of a major flood that swept through Roman Utrecht around 100 A.D. has been discovered in an excavation of the Merwede Canal Zone. The flood was wreaked havoc with the Roman infrastructure of the city, sweeping away a bridge and leaving a gully 33 feet deep and 150 feet across in its wake.
Utrecht was founded around 50 A.D. as the Roman castellum Traiectum, a small fort on the Lower Germanic Limes, the northern defensive boundary of the Roman Empire. The fort was on the Rhine then (its course has since changed), likely at a crossing. A civilian settlement grew around the fort to supply it and house the soldier’s families. The fort and town were abandoned under pressure from Germanic raids in around 275 A.D.
The Merwede Canal Zone is being excavated as part of an exploration of a Roman gravel road that was discovered last December. It was a branch of the larger road that followed the Limes and was used to transport troops, supplies and messages between Roman forts through Traiectum.
Because the fort was located on a river delta, water management was a constant issue. The excavation of the Merwede Canal Zone has uncovered culverts of different types that drained stormwater under the road to the countryside, and a remarkable 115 feet-long “swamp bridge,” that crossed a depression along the road, making transit possible even when the low point was flooded.
Archaeologists unearthed hundreds of wooden piles, several bridge piers, bridge abutments, culverts and roadside gutters. They were preserved in exceptional condition by the waterlogged soil and thick clay deposits from flooding. After the 100 A.D. flood, the Romans undertook a major restoration of the bridge by order of the Emperor Hadrian who had inspected the area on his travels a few years before. Dendrochronological analysis of the piles date the reconstruction to 125 A.D. Roman soldiers built a road diversion 460 feet around the deep gully hole, protected by a heavy oak revetment. The oak trees came from the northern Ardennes Forest 180 miles to the south.
The huge gully took centuries to fill, and before that, it seems people dropped valuable objects into the deep pool, perhaps as offerings. Archaeologists uncovered a unique silver loop necklace and a belt fitting decorated with inlaid glass in the fill. Over the centuries, the huge gully filled in with peat and clay, which preserved its contents but made an unstable subsoil and caused numerous subsidence events through the 20th century.
The gully and its contents will be preserved in situ, as will some of the 125 road diversion. Some of the piles have been removed for further study. Some are being donated to artists.
* This article was originally published here
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