Roman wood water pipe found in Belgium

A rare surviving wooden water pipe dating to the Roman imperial era has been discovered in Leuven, Belgium. Dating to between the 1st and 3rd century A.D., it is the first Roman wooden water pipe ever found in Flanders.

The pipe was found in an excavation in advance of construction of a new student residence.

The archaeologists suddenly came across the water pipe. “We had already found a Roman cultural layer,” says project leader Ben Van Genechten. “That was covered by old river deposits. Underneath that, we found another layer from the Roman period, in which we discovered fragments of roof tiles and pottery.”

“Underneath those two layers we also saw all sorts of canals,” Van Genechten explains. “It was in one of those canals that we found a tree trunk. At first we didn’t really know what that meant, but when we saw other tree trunks lying around, we realised that it was a very old water pipe.”

Leuven was a diverticulum in the Roman period, a small settlement with just a handful of houses and farms at a crossroads. It was on a military road that linked to the Via Belgica, the major Roman road connecting Cologne and Boulogne-sur-Mer. The crossroads was located near what is now the Blauwe Hoek roundabout on the Brusselsestraat. In Roman times, this spot was a ford on the river Dyle. That proximity to the river is the reason the wooden water pipe was preserved for 2,000 years in the anaerobic waterlogged soil.

Roman finds have been made before in the Brusselsestraat area, but they were always small fragments of pottery or rubble, nothing intact and nothing made of wood. The discovery of the water pipe is evidence that the diverticulum was large enough to rate significant water supply infrastructure.

The pipe will now be removed to a conservation laboratory for further study and analysis. Archaeologists will take a sample of the wood for dendrochronological analysis, after which the entire water pipe will be freeze-dried for rapid stabilization. Once it’s dried, it can be placed on public display.

* This article was originally published here