The Roman vicus of Nettersheim – a rural settlement center in the Northern Eifel

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The Roman settlement is located about 2 km south of the modern town of Nettersheim on both sides of the Urft River. Today, the Cologne-Trier railway line divides the approximately 5-hectare Roman settlement into eastern and western halves. The highest point is the "Görresburg" spur, which rises about 30 m above the Urft and Schleifbach valleys and was excavated in 1909 by Hans Lehner, director of the Rheinisches Provinzialmuseum in Bonn.

Since 2009, the site has been researched as part of a collaborative project between the municipality of Nettersheim, the LVR Office for the Preservation of Archaeological Monuments, and the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn. The excavations have yielded numerous new insights into the settlement history of the site: the Nettersheim vicus covered at least 3-4 hectares and is thought to have had around 300 inhabitants. An 8-10 meter wide road running through this settlement can be identified as the Roman magistrale Cologne-Trier, which crossed the Urft near Nettersheim. Even though the decisive inscription has not yet been found, it is very likely that the vicus of Nettersheim is identical to the station Marcomagus marked on ancient road maps. From the dedicatory inscriptions in the matron sanctuary, it can be concluded that beneficiarii were stationed here from the 2nd century at the latest. Their duties included controlling the road and possibly also collecting customs duties. After it was abandoned in the 3rd century, the road station from the middle imperial period was probably replaced by a small fort discovered near the Urft crossing. The approximately 50x40 m fortification, which is still preserved up to a meter high, secured the strategically and economically important road connection between the Roman governor's seat in Cologne and the imperial residence in Trier in the 4th and early 5th centuries.

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In addition to the fortified military station, numerous blast furnaces for smelting the iron ore found in the surrounding area characterized the late antique settlement. In the ruins of the Middle Imperial vicus, larger workshops were built in the late 3rd or early 4th century, where iron was produced over a long period of time. Throughout the settlement area, such workshops can be identified by layers of ash, sand, and slag up to one meter high. They prove that the vicus must have been at least a regionally important center of iron production by the 4th century at the latest.

The extensive use of the region in post-Roman times has meant that the ancient settlement landscape has been preserved in its basic form to this day.

Cooperation partners:

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• Municipality of Nettersheim
• LVR Office for the Preservation of Archaeological Monuments
• Department of Geography at RWTH Aachen University
• Institute for Prehistory and Early History at the University of Cologne (Laboratory for Archaeobotany, Laboratory for Dendroarchaeology)
• Dr. H. Christian Credner (Trier)