I’m starting to write this on the evening of the last day of excavation at Carnuntum in Austria. The team has just finished ice creams from the gelateria down the road, and we’re enjoying the final warmth of the day. Tomorrow, we’ll finish up drawing a plan of our trench, and pack up the trowels and steel toe-capped boots to head home, after almost three weeks working on late Roman layers of this amazing site.
It’s been a while since I posted on this blog, but I have been really keen to crack on with more of my Empire-lapping bike trip and head to the Black Sea from Vienna along another 2000km of the Danube. The other weekend, on one of our days off from site, I hired a bike and enjoyed the riverside trip to Bratislava, completing another c.70km of the project. I think the rest of this section, continuing to Constanta on the Black Sea coast of Romania or up to the marshy Danube delta along the line of Roman forts, will have to wait until next summer due to work commitments and finishing off my DPhil. So, this post will cover two aspects: the site at Carnuntum and our dig here, and also a taster for the next large part of the trip.
First, the dig… A University of Oxford delegation spent almost 3 weeks in Austria, excavating the south wall and part of the bath house of a large peristyle house from within the civilian settlement at Carnuntum. Roman Carnuntum was a significant settlement, home to tens of thousands of civilians as well as soldiers in both an auxiliary fort and a legionary fort, on the banks of the Danube between Vienna and Bratislava. It was the capital of Pannonia Superior, and it was here that Septimius Severus was proclaimed emperor by his legion in AD 193. The modern villages of Petronell-Carnuntum and Bad Deutsch Altenburg lie over this large area, and most of the ancient remains survive largely undisturbed beneath nearby farmland. There is much to discover, and excavation has been underway here for several decades, by teams from Austria and in recent years also by members of the University of Birmingham – work by a small Austrian team continues for around 6 months each year. An archaeological park has been constructed over parts of the site that have been uncovered with extensive and working reconstructions of bath houses, houses, streets and shops; two amphitheatres may also be visited, as well as the 4th century Heidentor (‘Heathen’s Gate’), and part of a sewer and water pipe and remains from the auxiliary fort at the Petronell-Carnuntum Kulturhaus, and two museums hold and display objects found across the site: more info here.
The earliest phases of the town were probably the wooden structures set up by the army in the mid 1st century. Much of the area that we were investigating, however, dated to building phases completed after an earthquake in the mid-4th century: this was confirmed by several finds of coins in a number of areas on which we worked. We could also see evidence for post-Roman use of the site, particularly in the form of robbed out walls for reuse of stone. In the area in which my team worked, we uncovered a number of architectural features, including an impressive brick/tile-lined drain with associated ‘water tank’, and further details of a large robbed-out wall and a tessellated floor. Most of the finds were of fragments of pottery and animal bone, but a coin of Constantius II helped to date one of the pebbly floor layers to the mid-4th century and we also discovered shards of glass probably from vessels.
On one rainy day, when digging would have done more harm than good, we had the chance to visit the Museum Carnuntinum to see the finds from the site. We saw sculptural remains from the Mithraea, a number of artefacts relating to the army, impressive descriptions of the site and how it functioned in context of the landscape, as well as inscriptions and figures of deities and important officials.
Amongst the most interesting objects for me were the grave stelae of legionaries stationed at Carnuntum. Two legions spent extended periods of time here (Legio XV Apollinaris and Legio XIIII Gemina), while Legio X Gemina and Legio VII Gemina were here for shorter periods. As legions moved around the empire, we can witness changes in the forms and motifs used on some stone carving – recent research by Martin Mosser has suggested that the move of Legio XV Apollinaris to the east of the empire affected the decoration of soldiers’ tombstones when they came back to Carnuntum. This has interesting implications for how ideas, cultural expression, and technical ability were transmitted around the Roman empire.
Now to the bike trip… On one of our weekend days off from excavation, I hired a bike in Vienna and cycled along the north bank of the Danube. The cycle path out of Vienna could not have been easier: it was paved, it ran alongside the Danube, and had regular water fountains, and cafes. Soon, this infrastructure petered out, and I encountered a path through the Danube nature reserve. This again is route no.6 of the Eurovelo routes, running all the way from the Atlantic to the Black Sea, including along the Danube. I had planned simply to follow that route – however, some upgrading work was taking place, and so instead of the straight path through the nature reserve, alongside the river, diversions took cyclists through villages, between fields of grain and sunflowers, and on small roads, adding a few kms. After crossing the river, with the intention to take the southern route into Bratislava, I paused to munch my sandwiches at Hainburg, happily chancing upon another water fountain, a tyre pump and tools available for cyclists, public toilets, and a relaxing bench in the shade. Continuing on, I cycled past two partly ruined castles facing each other on opposite hills across the Danube. One of them Devin castle, may have been built over a Roman military post and can be visited. The infrastructure at the border to Slovakia is now redundant in the world of Schengen, and crossing from Austria was without fanfare – but it marked for me the seventh country of the project so far, and so was rather exciting! Passing Czechoslovak bunkers, dating to just before the Second World War, I rolled into Bratislava with just enough time for a quick victory ice cream, before racing a raincloud back to Austria and the train to Vienna.
cycling archaeologist 