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Anreppen |
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After 15 BCE, the Roman general Drusus started the conquest of the country on the east bank of the Rhine. The most important part was the valley of the Lippe (picture), the country of the Sugambri, Bructeri, and Cherusci. By 9, he had pacified the area. In 4 CE, the emperor Augustus decided that Germania had to become a normal, tax-paying province. General Tiberius was sent to the north; he led the army of Germania Inferior to the sources of the Lippe (Velleius Paterculus, 2.105.3), where a camp was built at Anreppen. |
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The site measured 750 x 330 meters and was therefore a bit larger than the contemporary legionary base at Haltern (23 or 19 hectare). Excavations are still going on, but it is already known from dendrochronological evidence that Anreppen was occupied in the first decade of the first century, and was evacuated when the Roman governor, Publius Quinctilius Varus, was defeated in the Teutoburg Forest (in 9). | |
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The site is buried beneath these fields. This picture was made from the point where the southern gate must have been. You are looking to the northwest, to the commander's headquarters. It once measured 71x47 meters, which is large. The building had the shape of a Roman villa and it seems that the Romans wanted to have every possible comfort. They were there to stay. | |
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Smaller houses were built for the officers. This picture shows the line of the southeastern wall and ditch. If you don't see anything, there's nothing wrong with your eyes: nothing is visible. It is still buried and safe from destruction, until archaeologists will decide to excavate a bit more. | |
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A small terracotta statuette, probably produced at Haltern and discovered
at Anreppen, now at the Westfälisches Römermuseum in Haltern.
It it a caricature of a legionary soldier or a gladiator.
The Roman road continued from Anreppen to the east, in the direction of modern Paderborn. Anreppen can not have been the most easterly of the Roman possessions in the Lippe valley. The missing fort may have been at Paderborn, which was well-suited for a larger settlement. Charlemagne chose the site as a residence. |
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| A satellite photo can be found here. | ||
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