Wederath - Military camp

Belginum was located, on the Hunsruck plateau, at an important traffic junction of the Roman province.
Even before 1995, the outline of a Roman military camp had been discovered to the north west of the vicus of Belginum.
Measuring 210 by 148 m the camp, situated on the northern hillside, covers a surface area of 3 hectares.  
The camp was fortified with a rampart and a palisade. An embankment was heaped up against the palisade and stabilized with a light timber construction.
A 1,2 m wide V-shaped trench surrounding the whole camp served as both protection and drainage.
Among the finds were only a few fragments of ceramics. The camp was dated to about the time of Christ’s birth, which tallies with the road works, pushed ahead by Augustus, which expanded into the  Hunsrück.
Judging by the size of the camp an infantry troop of approximately 1000 men, possibly strengthened by 500 cavalry, may have been accommodated here.
At the end of each day’s march soldiers had to build a camp for their own protection, which   served as accommodation for a night or for several weeks. Defendable camps were vital in a hostile environment, which is why soldiers had to be trained in the construction of fieldworks and entrenchments, about which their displeasure was loudly voiced, as Tacitus reports.
The smallest military unit of the Legion was the contubernium, a group of 8 soldiers who – originally in a tent but later in a room of the company’s barracks – lived, slept, prepared meals and also fought next to each other. Their heavy baggage, a leather tent, digging stakes and a hand mill were carried by a mule, which belonged to the group.
Respectively ten of these eight-men-groups formed the centuria, comparable to a company today. The unit of 80 men was commanded by a centurion. The centuria was the smallest tactical unit of the legion. 
The cohort, as the next largest unit, consisted of six centuriae. Added to the 480 ordinary battle soldiers were approximately 120 others; higher ranking soldiers and helpers. Among them were the trumpeters, bugle players and the army flag bearer.
The legion was made up of ten of these cohorts. Around the middle of the 1st century A.D. the number of people in the 1st cohort was doubled. It received a preferential place in the camp and was the most esteemed unit of the legion.
Under the rule of Augustus the Roman army was made up of 28 legions, each with a strength of 5000 to 6000 men.
The existence of the military and the connected supply service had, without doubt, an enormous influence on the development and the growth of the civil settlement of Belginum/Wederath.
The Roman camp was, possibly, the initial point for the foundation of the street settlement. The reason for the deployment of a military unit at this point was probably in order to protect the important traffic junction on the plateau of the vicus Belginum.

[Martin Thoma]