Students locate ancient Roman army camp beyond empire’s northern border. See it
A team of university students sifted through chalky dirt in the Netherlands looking for artifacts or other traces of ancient Roman activity. For years, they’d been piecing together the site’s history, and this dig offered the final confirmation.
They’d located a “rare” ancient Roman military camp — beyond the empire’s northern border.
But the project didn’t start in the field. It started at a desk when Jens Goeree, a student with Saxion University of Applied Sciences, “developed a computer model” to predict the location of ancient Roman military camps, Saskia Stevens, an archaeologist and professor with Utrecht University, told McClatchy News.
Goeree’s model predicted a Roman camp might exist near Hoog Buurlo, so professors and students with the Constructing the Limes research project decided to investigate.
The team, led by Stevens, involved students from Saxion University of Applied Sciences and Utrecht University, according to a May 26 news release.
First, students took aerial photos of the Hoog Buurlo area and scanned the site with laser pulses, a process known as a LiDAR survey, Stevens told McClatchy News via email. Sure enough, the scans and photos showed traces of ancient Roman walls, a moat and several entrances.
Next, the team searched the area “using a metal detector” and excavated “several trial trenches,” Stevens said in the release. Photos show the dig process and a military harness fragment uncovered at the site.
“Few artefacts were found,” Steven said, but the traces confirmed Hoog Buurlo had once served as a temporary ancient Roman military camp, likely around 1,800 years ago.
“What makes this find so remarkable is that the camp lies beyond the northern frontier of the Roman Empire,” Stevens said in the release. The empire’s northern border, known as the Limes, was roughly 15 miles south of Hoog Buurlo.
Utrecht University described the newly found campsite as “rare.”
Dozens of temporary camps have been found in Germany and hundreds have been found in the United Kingdom, but “only four such temporary Roman camps are known in the Netherlands,” Stevens said.
Roman soldiers typically stayed at temporary camps for a few days or weeks before continuing marching. The Hoog Buurlo camp may have “served as a stopover en route to another camp at Ermelo-Leuvenum, about a day’s march away,” the university said.
“Through the (Constructing the Limes) project, we are particularly interested in these kinds of camps because they provide valuable insights into Roman military presence and operations in frontier regions,” Stevens said. “They help us understand the routes taken by Roman troops and show how the Romans made extensive use of territories beyond the formal boundaries of their Empire.”
Hoog Buurlo is in the central Netherlands and a roughly 50-mile drive southeast from Amsterdam.
This story was originally published May 28, 2025 at 10:45 AM with the headline "Students locate ancient Roman army camp beyond empire’s northern border. See it."
