German archaeologists find Roman temple to Mars at Kapersburg

Archaeologists from hessenARCHÄOLOGIE and Goethe University Frankfurt uncovered a Roman temple dedicated to the war god Mars in the forest surrounding the Kapersburg fort in Hesse, Germany, the state monument authority reported this month.

The find, made a few centimeters beneath the forest floor of the eastern Taunus, included two votive stones, a statuette of the goddess Victoria and fragments of another statue that researchers believe may depict Mars himself, according to hessenschau.

The temple stood in the vicus, the civilian settlement attached to the fort, which housed a Roman auxiliary unit known as the Numerus Nidensium for roughly 150 years. The unit’s name links it to ancient Nida, in what is now the Frankfurt district of Heddernheim.

Kai Mückenberger, Hesse’s district archaeologist and coordinator for the Limes World Heritage site, identified the outline of the building in the forest soil. “Das ist ein Tempel,” he said, according to hessenschau, meaning “That is a temple.”

Das ist ein Tempel.

The temple’s foundation formed a rectangle about five meters long, with an inner square enclosed by walls roughly 50 centimeters thick, hessenschau reported. Mückenberger said the prayer room appeared to lack a fourth wall, suggesting one side was open, possibly closed off by a wooden gate or grille, and that the surrounding foundation pointed to an “Umgangstempel,” a temple type with a covered walkway around the central shrine.

Katharina Grießhaber, an archaeologist normally based at the Landesmuseum Saalburg, excavated the well-preserved foundation and described finding the statue fragments as a highlight of the dig, hessenschau reported. Among the pieces recovered were the hand of a god, believed to be Mars, fragments of animals and a largely intact torso identified as Victoria, recognizable by her wings, a palm branch and a laurel emblem.

Two newly found votive stones carry Latin inscriptions that Professor Markus Scholz of Goethe University Frankfurt is studying with the excavation team. One inscription remains untranslated; researchers say it could reveal the ancient name of the Roman settlement at Kapersburg, according to finestresullarte.info.

Evidence of life after Rome’s withdrawal

Near the temple, excavators also found a Late Antique brooch and fragments of handmade pottery. hessenARCHÄOLOGIE said the objects could provide the first archaeological evidence that people used the site after the Roman military abandoned the Limes frontier in the third century, a withdrawal historians call the “Limesfall.” Researchers cautiously link the later material to Alemannic groups in the Wetterau region, though they say further excavation is needed to determine whether activity there was brief or sustained.

Excavations have also traced a smithy, later replaced by residential buildings, along with Roman roads and terraces, showing the vicus had its own changing layout and economy beyond its role as an appendage to the fort.

A village overlooked for over a century

The Kapersburg fort has been studied since the late 19th century, including excavations led by Louis Jacobi for the Imperial Limes Commission, but the surrounding vicus received comparatively little attention. Before storm damage and bark-beetle die-off cleared sections of spruce forest and exposed the site, only one building outside the fort’s walls was known, a bath near one of its four gates, according to hessenschau’s earlier reporting.

The newly exposed settlement covers roughly 200 by 300 meters. While about 160 soldiers were stationed at the fort, the village may have housed two to three times as many people, or roughly 600 to 700 residents, hessenschau reported, citing excavation staff including Manuel Pieper, the dig’s technical director.

Mückenberger said the site’s preservation is unusual because farming never disturbed it. “Here we have preservation layers that are unparalleled in Hesse, precisely because agriculture has never taken hold in this area,” he said, adding that the forest “has preserved everything” over recent centuries.

Kapersburg forms part of the Upper German-Raetian Limes, a 550-kilometer former Roman frontier that UNESCO designated a World Heritage Site in 2005 along with sections in Britain. The frontier runs through four German states and includes about 120 fort sites and nearly 900 watchtowers, according to UNESCO’s listing.

Researchers plan further excavations with Goethe University Frankfurt students if funding and permits allow work to continue next year, hessenARCHÄOLOGIE said.