Archaeologists have found unique objects from Roman times in Tiel. The riches probably belonged to the local Batavian elite who lived in the countryside. However, further research is needed to trace the villa.
The largest archaeological excavation in the Netherlands of recent decades is currently taking place in Tiel. For the expansion of a business park, archaeologists have been investigating an area of 36 football fields since last December. Until now, traces have been found from the Stone Age to the Middle Ages. But it is the recently excavated Roman objects that put the archaeologist Henk van der Velde in a Hallelujah mood:no less than 2500 bronze objects, including a luxurious jar of ointment (balsamarium, see video) and a cool oil lamp. “A find like this only comes up once every thirty years. It is very unexpected, especially for the countryside.”
Van der Velde is project leader for the excavations and researcher at Leiden University. The unique ointment jar is made of appliqué, which means that the image protrudes. On the potty, five Eroten depict scenes in a bathhouse:these Roman gods of love wash their hands, each other and sit on a typical Roman lounger. “The jar has so many details:you can even see the tiles on the roof and the cloths hanging on the wall!”
Bathing culture occupied a central place in Roman society, but very few bathhouses have been found in the Betuwe. The question that this find raises is which Batavians in the countryside had become acquainted with a Roman bathhouse. The ordinary farmer? “No, I think this is a small elite group. For example, a Batavian who has seen something of the world and who took his own piece of Rome back to the countryside. The utensils found such as a wine strainer and the bronze oil lamp are luxury products.” A simple Batavian farmer could only dream of that.
Batavian elite
Other notable finds include a sand-lime statue of the Roman supreme god Jupiter on a throne, a sacrificial stone with the inscription DEAE (to the goddess) and a relief with men in toga and a pitcher. The archaeological objects date from the second half of the second century and the beginning of the third century. The most special thing about the find is the richness of the objects, which the researchers would expect to find in a Roman city:“This sheds new light on the Batavians from this region. This brings us to a new social upper category, the top of Batavian society. We don't know much about the Batavian elite, let alone an elite in the countryside.”
The finds come from an old river bed on the edge of the research area and the archaeologists suspect that a temple or villa must have been located on the higher bank. This bank alone is not part of the investigation. Van der Velde:“We agreed in advance to keep that location. From an archaeological point of view, this is a wise choice, because that way you won't disturb anything. But as a scientist I really want to know what's under the ground! If there were a large villa, there is a good chance of associated buildings such as a bathhouse and temple. That was very normal. The Batavian who held the reins of government often also had religious functions. Hopefully we can do additional research in the future.”
The number of Romans who walked around in the Netherlands was small and today's Tiel was the farthest corner of the Roman Empire. That is why the researchers think that this is not about Romans but about Batavians who were influenced by Roman culture. Van der Velde sees an early globalization in this:“It is precisely in a remote corner that it is good to investigate which cultural habits people adopted and how this integration process took place. How Roman was Roman really? These finds show that the Batavians knew the imagery, like the Erots, from the Romans. So there is a shared culture, just like we wear jeans and drink coke all over the world.”
Baby graves
Van der Velde sees the first consumer society in history in the Roman Empire. In the period before and after the Romans, things played a much smaller role in people's daily lives. You can also see this in the grave goods that were found during these excavations. The quantity and wealth of these clearly increased after the arrival of the Romans.
The common idea is that cremation was the custom among both the Batavians and the Romans and that people did not bury their dead until the third century. But it turns out not to be that black and white, according to Van der Velde:“We also found a few graves with bone remains, including a double grave with two babies. There was a cultural movement here in which it was customary to bury, but we don't know for whom or why.” Does it concern a certain social layer of the population? Are they men or women, adults or just children? In the near future, the researchers will investigate the grave goods and bone remains to find an answer to this.