User:PWilkinson/Fall of the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes

The Neupotz hoard is in direct connection with looting after Limes case and was therefore referred to as "Alemanni booty"

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Under the Limes case 'refers to the. To the center of the 3rd century s by the task carried Romans of them since 1 & nbsp; built n century AD Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes and the withdrawal of imperial troops from the provincial area beyond the Rhine and Danube to the river borders.

Through a series of meaningful archaeological finds and the revaluation of the literary sources of Limes case appears no longer as a simple historical event, but as a multifaceted, complex phenomenon whose event historical relationships as yet not fully understood archaeological findings instructed that can be interpreted differently in turn Because written sources are largely lacking or are of dubious reliability, the research is often on.

In the past it usually took at monocausally that the Romans through military conflicts and external attacker in the context of the so-called Alemannic onslaught were forced to evacuate the area east of the Rhine and north of the Danube. Bodenfunde suggest however that this operation was a result of years of development during the Crisis of the Third Century with a decline of the borderland; civil wars in the empire seem to have played a role. All this eventually led to the years from 259/260 to the de facto role of the Agri Decumates. And take back the Roman military border to the Rhine and the Danube .

Research History

Timeline to Limes case and the 3rd century

. The considerations which historical events to give up the Upper Germanic-Raetian Limes led and exactly when it took place, are as old as the Limes research itself The great historian Theodor Mommsen described the long prevailing view of the operation in 1885 as follows:

A number of flowering Roman cities was then ödegelegt by the invading barbarians, and the right bank of the Rhine was the Romans lost forever.

— Theodor Mommsen, "Römische Geschichte",

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The co-initiated by Mommsen Reichs-Limeskommission found similar results. Georg Wolff presented in 1916 that:

A retracting in the second, back line, though a forced through some breakthroughs, was what we are accustomed to call the conquest of Limes by the Germans.

— Georg Wolff, "On the History of the Upper Germanic Limes",

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The research was still recognizable dominated at the time of military issues, which is why we went out as a matter of course by a storm the border Walles by external enemies. The lack of finds, which occupy such an event, however, was already a problem. Objections came from the discipline of Roman provincial archaeology. Numismatists identified many coins found in the former Limes area as coins from the period after 260. Early medieval archeologists doubted the dating basics and drew attention to the close proximity of many frühalamannischer settlements. More recently gave palaeobotanical studies have shown that the late period of the limit appears to coincide with a number of significant changes in the environment .

First doubt in a single, dramatic and warlike event as a cause of "Limes case" were clearly already in the late period of the Ottoman Empire Limeskommission by finds partly ongoing series of coins. Ernst Fabricius laid in 1927 with his dating of Limes If a higher priority on the latest findings, particularly from the forts Saalburg, Kapersburg, Jagsthausen and Niederbieber. He came after analysis of coins and inscriptions still to the conclusion that all Limes forts in 260 abandoned or, more rarely, were destroyed Fabricius had at the same time acknowledge that parts of the right bank ownership even after the loss of Limes even longer by the Romans, to the middle of the 4th century, held been occupied or temporarily again were.

During the Second World War, the historical research in the GDR wanted to 'see in the limit case, a sudden' 'overcoming the already weakened Roman slaveholding order', knüpften the West German archaeologists Fabricius' work on and tried the issue of partial consecutive series of coins (Wilhelm Schleiermacher) and the exact dating of the Limes Falls (Helmut Schoppa) to clarify. Schoppa believed based on findings from the forts Großkrotzenburg and Alteburg to a whereabouts Roman populations. Also the area around Wiesbaden (Aquae Mattiacorum) was first cleared with the object of the Rhine frontier in Late Antiquity by the Romans .

For the exact date, the experts expressed cautious in the 1980s and 1990s. Increasingly distant one from acceptance, 260 have marked a massive incision. Dieter Planck about wanted 1988 do not exclude a slightly later object of the frontier Hans Ulrich Nuber presented in 1990 that the task of the limes must continue to be the subject of research, and pointed to intra Roman clashes to . same time towards .

Just two years later changed the Fund of Augsburg Victory Altar s the image of the sinking of Limes sustainable and confirmed Nuber. Up to this point had been completely unknown that the province of Raetia at the time of Limes If the had joined Gallic Empire under Postumus That same year. . hosted the Württembergische Landesmuseum a special presentation on the Limes case The new find lively scientific debate about the downfall of the Limes considerably. In 1995, the Saalburg Museum held a scientific colloquium and a special presentation on the Augsburg Victory Altar The time of the Limes If today illuminated more in their individual aspects with interdisciplinary approaches to numismatics and the natural sciences. Recent Publications avoid phrases such as "the Limes was overrun on a broad front", because the events of the years are 259/60 now mostly considered only as an important step in a long-standing history with many individual problems.