Traces of a Roman army camp have been discovered close to Ermelo. It would appear that an entire legion of 5000 men camped here for a number of days, and then moved on. Their reason for being here is a great mystery, because the camp is 35 km to the north of where the border was at that time. We can still see the contours of the camp to this day.
Discovering the Roman camp
On a map from the 19th century, there is a notable, crooked rectangle that is labelled with the words ‘Heidensch Kamp’, meaning heathen camp. In 1922, the famous archaeologist Holwerda discovered that this rectangle marked the remains of a Roman army camp. Since then, the camp has been disappearing slowly from sight with the cultivation of the woods and the construction of the provincial road to Harderwijk. Then in 1987, a dig was commissioned for the southern part of the camp.
Roman marching camp houses entire legion
The camp measured 250 by 350 metres and was surrounded by an earth embankment of almost a metre high and a V-shaped moat of 1.5 metres deep. On top of the embankment were crisscrossed posts, bound together, and inside, were hundreds of tents in tidy rows. Each tent housed eight men who were assigned to camp together, and cook together too. The dig uncovered their fireplaces as well as the marks made by hammering wooden tent pegs into the ground. The camp was only used for a few days, but it did house an entire legion.
Strategic position on high ground
The camp appears to have been erected between 170 and 180 AD. The reason why, remains a mystery, but perhaps it was part of a military hit-and-run raid against ancient Germanic Chauci tribes of northern Germany, but there is no written evidence of this. However, the camp was erected in a very strategic position on the highest point in the surrounding area. The former Zuiderzee and the Flevomeer Lake were also just one day’s march away. But perhaps we will never really know. For the time being however, this is the only Roman marching camp that we know about in the whole of the Netherlands.
