Utrechtse Vecht was a Roman gateway to the North

The Vecht river meanders slowly from Utrecht via Breukelen to the IJsselmeer. There are tourists – they ride bikes, rent a boat, take a tour or eat cake on the terrace. “Relaxation in an idyllic landscape”, announces the local tourist office.

Before, it was different. About two thousand years ago, ships full of Roman troops sailed through the rugged swamp here. From the Rhine basin they moved to the northern regions, with the aim of adding it to the Roman Empire.

Part of the Vecht probably comes from the canals that the Roman commander-in-chief Drusus Claudius Nero built especially for this conquest. At least that is the strong suspicion of Jan Verhagen, a 72-year-old doctoral student, and two geoarchaeologists from the VU University of Amsterdam, who published an article about it in the journal this week. Dutch Journal of Geosciences†

writings

The existence of the so-called Drusus Canals is known from Roman writings. When the Romans wanted to conquer North Germanic regions such as Groningen, Friesland and northern Germany, they needed a good infrastructure for their troop transport. Due to the lack of highways through the marshy area, it was easier on the water. In order to avoid the turbulent North Sea, they dug a few canals between 12 and 9 BC which connected the Rhine region to the north.

The location of these ‘fossae Drusianae’ has never been specified. The river area in the Netherlands is so dynamic that excavation tracks are often not kept for long: rivers move the soil through which they flow and constantly change their routes. In this way, the landscape is continuously renewed and many old traces are erased.

There were, however, clues in the ancient writings, says Verhagen. For example, the Roman writer Suetonius records that Drusus had canals dug “across the Rhine”, and Tacitus writes that General Germanicus imported the canal from his father Drusus in AD 16 “with ships containing legions and allies”. After a successful journey through lakes and the “ocean” (probably the Wadden Sea), he reached the Ems River.

Drill

Verhagen combined these historical sources with research into stream soils over time, which he extracted from literature and supplemented with his own drilling. “We knew of the existence of peat lakes long before Roman times, in the area between Breukelen and Muiden,” says Verhagen. “We suspected that the Romans dug channels in the peat to connect these lakes, creating the Vecht.”

The researchers carried out 450 excavations in the area between Overmeer and Nigtevecht, dated the excavated sediments and established that this part of the Vecht was abnormally straight more than two thousand years ago. This reinforced the suspicion that it was a channel at the time.

Until more than ten years ago, most scientists believed that the section of Gelderse IJssel between Westervoort and Doesburg originated from the Drusus canals. This option expired when geologists established in 2008 that this part of the IJssel was already a natural river before Roman times.

Roman Empire

Archaeologist Jona Lendering, who was not involved in this research herself, finds the analysis interesting. “There is an urgent need for scientists to combine disciplines to uncover history,” he says. The lender wonders above all whether the texts of Suetonius and Tacitus refer to the same rivers.

The Roman conquest of Friesland and the surrounding area was successful, although rule did not last long. Around the year 40 AD, the Romans withdrew again behind the Rhine and the Limes became the border of their territory. This northern border of the Roman Empire has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since August.