Marc Sanders of Phalera Filmworks - and the centurio of Legio X Gemina - taped the construction of our Roman wall and ditch during the 2008 Roman Festival in Nijmegen. The video has now been re-edited (with me cut out, phew!) and has had graphics added to it, made by a member of Legio XV Primigenia. It looks totally awesome now. Just needs an English voice over, as the current version is Dutch only.

I wasn't able to attend much of the preparations on Friday. We had someone come over at home to install bathroom cupboards and the like. When I arrived on the festival terrain, it was raining. Hard. Pluvius kept this up pretty much until Saturday morning at 10, just before the Festival was to open. From then on we had pretty much unbroken nice and actually sunny weather. I actually managed to get me a red neck!

Just a quick blog today. Everyone's been very busy doing all the last minute things that have to be done before the festival can get underway. Sadly it seems that the capricious Dutch weather is not cooperating too wonderfully this weekend, but I'm sure it'll still be cool. Impressions from Thursday are below

The posts get cutouts with the chainsaw. It's a bit faster than using a hammer and chisel.

The resulting frame, a yoke consisting of a pair of posts with three crossbars.

The framework of a basic wall is up. The yokes now need to be connected by a deck on top and of course need their sides filled with planking and filled with earth. Obviously, the audience will get a good view of how such a wall was constructed this weekend!

Day three: time for some serious progress. Things speed up when you've got big earth moving equipment. The assistance came first from one man and a big drill. We needed 20cm (8") diameter post holes a few feet deep.

And despite our best efforts, we would never have been able to dig the ditch in a week with such a small team. Roughly 40 cubic meters (ca.1400 cubic feet) of earth had to be moved, so we were quite grateful that the nearby construction crew could skip over to our little project.

And this was the result: a row of post holes and an impressive gap in the ground that will need more hand work.

As is, the ditch is not deep enough, and it lacks the nasty high-angled 'v' in the middle.

At the same time, the bracing bars were finished and one of the posts had the corresponding hole cut into it to complete the mortise and tenon construction. On Thursday a chainsaw specialist will come to complete these holes and the first pairs of posts-and-bracers will be raised.

It fits!

Day two revolved mostly around the bracing bars of which there will be thirty: three for each pair of posts. They'll each end up looking a lot like a large tabula ansata. The trapezoid extensions on the ends will match the cut-outs in the posts, which will be cut on Thursday.

A few more impressions and a note: although the wall will look accurate, we're sadly lacking in cohort-sized manpower, so we have to take a few modern shortcuts.

Preparing the cross grain cut of the trapezoid extensions on the bracers. A circular saw makes that an easy task. Jurjen (left) and Melchior de Grood at work.

Jurjen and Melchior sawing a template for the bracers.


On Wednesday the top soil and some of the ditch will be dug with some serious equipment. Jurjen and I indicated the outline of the ditch with our reproduction dolabrae and and hoe. These are based on tools found on the site and which are now preserved in the Valkhof Museum, Nijmegen.

What will this weekend be a closed off area, is at the moment freely accessible from the neighbourhood. With so many tools and equipment on site, it's essential that someone camps on the site to keep an eye on things. After our last pre-festival committee meeting, some stayed behind to enjoy the campfire and company. In the end, Jurjen and I persevered through a wet and windy night.

For the Roman festival of this weekend in Nijmegen, we (I'm part of the all volunteer organization) are building a 10 meter stretch of Roman wall and ditch. Sadly, it'll be only temporary, because of the complicated permits and regulations. Nevertheless, we'll do it right and make it as archaeologically and historically accurate as possible, materials excepted (oak would be prohibitively expensive for a temporary project). The wall will in fact be built right on the lines of the original wall of the early imperial second fort at the Nijmegen Kops Plateau(Youtube video of the digs in Dutch).