Panel 8.9 – Town-country relations in the northern parts of Germania inferior from an economic perspective


Organiser/Chair:

  • Marion Brüggler (LVR-Amt für Bodendenkmalpflege im Rheinland)
  • Julia Obladen-Kauder (LVR-Amt für Bodendenkmalpflege im Rheinland)
  • Harry Van Enckevort (Gemeente Nijmegen, Bureau Archeologie en Monumenten)

Speakers:

Panel abstract

Germania inferior is in some aspects an interesting candidate for investigating town-country relationships. While its southern part borders on the distribution area of celtic oppida, its northern parts had no Iron Age tradition of larger settlement agglomerations. Nonetheless, in the Roman period towns – even one Colonia – were founded here: The Colonia Ulpia Traiana (Xanten) and the municipia of Ulpia Noviomagus (Nijmegen) and Forum Hadriani/Municipium Aelium Cananefatium (Voorburg). Another important economic agent is the Roman military with its numerous forts along the Lower German Limes. This massive and new agglomeration of people that were not primarily involved in food production must have posed a challenge to the supply of provisions. This panel focuses on the northern parts of Germania inferior and aims to discuss the economic interaction between the named towns as well as the other larger settlement agglomerations (military forts and vici) with their respective hinterland. What supply strategies for the towns can be made out? Are there differences between the civitates? Do they differ from those in the southern parts of Germania inferior and other northwestern provinces? And if so, in what way and what are the reasons for it? Also, methodological questions need to be addressed: Can we, with our data at hand, answer these questions? Else, what other methods can be applied to gain a deeper insight into this aspect of Roman economy? The Speakers of this session are set.

Paper abstracts

1. Christoph Eger (LVR-RömerMuseum)

Colonia Ulpia Traiana: the economy of a garrison and border town at the Lower Germanic limes
The foundation of Castra Vetera and the deployment of two legions a few years BC is the starting point of large scale economic acitivities in the region of what is today the city of Xanten. Grain, oil and meat in large quantitities were needed to feed the troops. But the legionaries needed also cloths, leather, ceramics, metal objects and other things more. And they had money to pay for it. Soon, a civilian settlement grew up nearby the legionary fortress where specialists organised the production, trade and transport of a large variety of goods. In AD 100, this settlement was changed into Colonia Ulpia Traiana where also a lot of veterans lived. However, the economic preconditions were not the best at this place: the grounds in the surroundings of CUT are sandy and not very fertile, quarries, mines and big forests with oaks are missing. A lot of requested goods had to be transported by floats and boats on the Rhine river rather than by carriages overland. Hence, the river harbour might have played a central role in the life of the city. Archaeological evidence shows that a large variety of handicrafts was present in the city. But obviously none of them played a supraregional role. CUT have never become as important as Cologne in Roman times. Was CUT finally a failed city?

"Colonia Ulpia Traiana: The Economy of a Garrison and Border Town at the Lower German Limes" (Fulltext)

 

2. Marion Brüggler and Renate Gerlach (LVR-Amt für Bodendenkmalpflege im Rheinland) / Tanja Zerl and Jutta Meurers-Balke (University of Cologne) / Michael Herchenbach

The hinterland of the Colonia Ulpia Traiana (Xanten): Supply basis for the town?
The territory of the Colonia Ulpia Traiana (CUT) comprised the civitates of the Cugerni in the north and of the Baetasii in the south. Their landscapes were very different: While the civitas of the Baetasii lay in the loess-belt with its high quality soils, the civitas of the Cugerni was situated in a landscape made up of loamy and sandy soils with small scale changes of soil quality. High quality soils also occur, but not in as large areas. In this presentation, we concentrate on the northern part of the territory of the CUT, i.e. its immediate hinterland.
The archaeological record here is still sparse. Only in the last decade farms ware excavated and only a handful is known so far. Settlement layouts, material culture and archaeobotanical data can be evaluated, but no zooarchaeological data is available due to lack of preservation. Therefore we have tried to apply a theoretical model by van Dinter, Kooistra et al. created for the Rhine Delta. According to it, the farmers should have been able to create a surplus in cereal to supply the town. However, farming and food consumption obviously continued in Iron Age traditions in these vernacular farmsteads, so whether a surplus had actually been created is questionable. Still, some kind of economic interaction must have taken place, as the occurrence of Roman made pottery shows. We would like to discuss how we can get a better understanding of the economic interactions between the CUT and its hinterland with the available data.

"The Hinterland of the Colonia Ulpia Traiana (Xanten): Supply Basis for the Town?" (Fulltext)

 

3. Harry van Enckevort (Gemeente Nijmegen)

Ulpia Noviomagus and the villas in the civitas Batavorum
The data on the use of building materials such as grauwacke and stamped tiles show that, at the beginning of the 2nd century, the army was involved in the construction of both public buildings in Nijmegen and villas and temples in the Batavian countryside. The construction of these buildings seems rather to have been intended to help expand the economic, infrastructural and administrative structure of the civitas Batavorum on the Roman model. In combination with other archaeological data this suggests an important social-economic transformation of the civitas during a period of almost less than a generation, between approximately 85 and 122 A.D. The reorganisation from a military district on the Lower Rhine into the province of Germania inferior, the grant of municipal status and the imperial name to the town, the construction of villas and temples, as well as the substitution of hand-made and regionally made wheel-thrown pottery by imported pottery, are important signs of this development. Other signs are changes in the economy in the countryside. This illustrates how the social and economic development of the Batavian community could be bound up with the Roman army and the career of Trajan. It is striking that this process started about 100 years after the arrival of the Romans in the Dutch river area, and six decades after the Rhine was established as the northwestern frontier of the Empire.

"Stones, Tiles, Temples and Villas" (Fulltext)

 

4. Laura Kooistra (BIAX Consult) / Maaike Groot

Supplying the Lower German Limes with food
With the creation of the Roman province of Germania inferior in the first century AD the rural inhabitants of the Lower Rhine Delta would have changed their farming practice from a subsistence strategy to surplus farming. In this part of the province a dozen small forts and the towns Ulpia Noviomagus (Nijmegen) and Forum Hadriani/Municipium Aelium Cananefatium (Voorburg) were located. The aim of this presentation is to prove the hypothesis that the farmers supplied the forts and the towns.
In the last few decennia, a large number of agrarian settlements in the Lower Rhine Delta were investigated. The data analysis included botanical and zoological assemblages concerned with crops and livestock, respectively. These data prove that the farmers in this area produced a certain surplus of plant and animal food.
The data sets collected from forts/vici and the named towns suggest that food produced by the local farmers would have been used by people in forts/vici and in towns. The way in which the food was distributed between farmers, citizens and soldiers needs some more attention to be fully understood. The archaeological research also generated data which made clear that the towns and forts were supplied by food from outside Germania inferior.
To give ‘food’ for discussion a flow diagram of the possible supply networks is presented in which gaps of knowledge occur. Suggestions will be given for other methods that can be applied to gain a deeper insight into this aspect of the Roman economy.

"Supplying Food to Ulpia Noviomagus Batavorum" (Fulltext)