At some point in the last few decades BC, Roman legionaries paused on the banks of the Mera River, to the north of Lake Como, in Italy. While the soldiers were there, some stones in the riverbed caught their eye. Although the rock is a distinctive one, which outcrops upriver in the Bergell region, the legionaries’ interest was not piqued by its geological novelty. Instead, they noticed that the natural river processes had smoothed these stones into an ideal size and shape to serve as slingshot. The soldiers were stocking up on ammunition. Even though the battlegroup was already well equipped with lead slingshot, their instincts were sound. Ahead lay a journey into hostile terrain. The soldiers would follow the Mera valley into modern Switzerland, and then make for the major Alpine pass at Septimer. We know – and the legionaries surely suspected – that they were marching towards at least one battle. That clash lay roughly 70km distant, presumably placing it a matter of days in their future as the soldiers hunted for projectiles on the riverbank. And when the fighting did erupt, legionary slingers would find themselves in the thick of the action.
This military expedition formed one part of Rome’s struggle to subdue the various groups living in the Alps to the north of Italy. These efforts started in the 30s BC and culminated in a successful campaign of conquest ordered by Augustus and spearheaded by Drusus and Tiberius in 15 BC. While this broad chronological framework is provided by the surviving ancient literature, specific details about the events playing out during this era are relatively sparse. Our knowledge of the legionary battlegroup as it moved into the Alpine region comes not from the pen of any Roman writer, but rather relics of their passing that have survived in the landscape for over 2,000 years. These telltale traces range all of the way from a handful of stray finds to sizeable military structures. Metal-detectorists and archaeologists were first alerted to the former presence of these troops a little over two decades ago. Following in their footsteps has culminated in the recently announced discovery of a well-preserved fortification straddling an Alpine ridge at a height of 2,230m above sea level. The ability to reconstruct a sizeable chunk of the route this battlegroup took, and witness a range of their activities while on the march, is little short of extraordinary.
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‘It all started in 2003’, says Hannes Flück, of the Archaeological Service of the Grisons, who is one of the three project leads, alongside Peter-Andrew Schwarz, Vindonissa-Professor at the University of Basel, and Thomas Reitmaier, head of the Archaeological Service of the Grisons. ‘A metal-detectorist with a permit to work in the Graubünden Canton of Switzerland went looking for old roads in the region. He investigated a valley called “Surses” in the local language, which provides a good connection between the lands to the south and the north of the Alps. The Septimer Pass lies at one end, providing a steep but relatively easy access point, while to the north the valley leads towards another important passage at the Lenzerheide. Searching an area of pasture at the northern end of the valley yielded two lead slingshots, which had been stamped with the names of two different Roman legions: the Third and the Twelfth. Roman lead slingshot is rare in Switzerland, so it suggested something out of the ordinary thereabouts. Even so, while examining the remainder of the pasture produced lots of interesting finds, there was nothing else from this early Roman period. Twenty years on, we still don’t know exactly why those two lead slingshot ended up there; perhaps they were simply lost on route.’
New thinking in scholarship