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The arrival of the Romans in the Low Countries and the Rhine-Meuse delta not only led to major social and cultural changes in this area, but also to various changes in material culture. One of these changes concerned the infrastructure for the transport of goods and people, which was an important factor in successfully holding together the vast Roman Empire for a long time. This dissertation considers the transport infrastructure by water in the Rhine-Meuse delta, which largely consisted of natural waters, but was artificially expanded in Roman times, mainly by the construction of canals. By Roman waterworks, we mean the total of artificial elements in this transport infrastructure: canals, dams, harbours, quay constructions, locks, etc. A general theme is the difference in recognisability between the two Roman canals in the delta that we know from classical authors. Corbulo’s canal has been confirmed in many places between Leiden and Naaldwijk, whereas there are many hypotheses about the location of the Drusus canal(s), but so far, no clues about possible remains have been found in the subsoil. Most likely, the position of these two waterworks in the landscape was fundamentally different, whereby in the case of the Drusus canal(s) post-depositional (river) processes have resulted in the remains becoming not or hardly recognisable. Within the scope of this study, investigations were carried out regarding the Roman bifurcation point of the Rhine and the Waal, Drusus' Dam and the castellum Carvium. Important questions concern the age of the branch of the Lower Rhine, how the washed-out remains of the castellum Carvium relate to the Roman Waal and Rhine and how the dam functioned by its construction in directing a larger part of the river water into the Lower Rhine branch. Another investigation was carried out in the Utrechtse Vecht area on the canal(s) of Drusus constructed around 12 BC. The special thing about this part of the Vecht river is that it runs through former peat-bounded lakes that were still (partly) open in Roman times. It was reconstructed that the Overmeer-Nigtevecht reach of the Vecht between two former lakes started life as a very straight channel. Its age has been constrained to be closer to the time of Drusus’ activities (early Roman age) then thought before. Although we have not found in situ remains of Drusus canal(s), these two new insights make the Vecht option, effectuated by a series of short canals, more likely to be the Drusus canal(s). This dissertation also treats the castella as connection points between the Roman networks of transport by water and over land, located directly on the river. With a new method, a reinterpretation of Roman place names along the Lower Rhine Limes was made, which provides a more plausible identification of four Roman places than the existing ones. On the basis of this, a hypothetical reconstruction was made for the Roman routes in the Itineraria and where main roads can be found, resulting in a new overview map of the fortifications along the Lower German Limes. The synthesis chapter gives a summarized description of the different waterworks and their manifestations in the Rhine-Meuse delta. Map images of the network of transport by water have been made for three different periods of the Roman period. The synthesis chapter considers research on Roman waterworks in the light of the theme of recognisability in the subsoil. When a canal is difficult to identify because of taphonomic processes, direct data are often not available (anymore) and we have to rely on indirect data, as was the case in the research carried out in the Vecht area. |
