Artist’s rendering of what the ancient Roman town at Stein/St. Pantaleon-Erla may have looked like—it is possibly the forgotten Roman city of ClaudiviumUniversity of Innsbruck.

Ancient Roman Settlement Discovered in Austria May Be Lost City of Claudivium

by · ARTnews

An interdisciplinary team, including archaeologists from the University of Innsbruck, has mapped the remains of a previously unknown Roman town in Lower Austria. Researchers think the settlement could be the lost city of Claudivium, abandoned over 1800 years ago. The news was reported by several sites, including Arkeonews, following a September 25 announcement by the University of Innsbruck.

The site is located at the hamlet of Stein/St. Pantaleon-Erla, just a few miles east of the ancient Roman military installation of Lauriacum, part of the UNESCO World Heritage site of Danube Limes. It has been known since the 1970s for yielding Roman artifacts, but an organized investigation did not commence until 2017, when geophysical surveys exposed a first-century fortification there.

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Researchers subsequently examined aerial photographs of the area and began conducting noninvasive magnetic and ground-penetrating radar surveys. What they discovered was evidence of a settlement, complete with a regular street grid, residential areas, and an amphitheater large enough to hold 8,000 spectators, that had developed alongside the fort.

While civilian colonies commonly sprang up near Roman forts, providing soldiers with goods and services, this one showed signs of having been built according to an organized plan rather than growing organically. Its size was likewise unusual, notes Gerald Grabherr, an archaeologist at the University of Innsbruck. “The construction of a 25- to 30-hectare settlement with a street grid for an auxiliary fort with approximately 500 soldiers,” says Grabherr, “is unprecedented in the Roman Empire.”

An extensive cemetery added to the impression of a flourishing urban center, as did what might have been part of a brewing complex found through selective excavations.

Archeological evidence, including coins, indicated that the city only existed between around 80 CE and around 180 CE, when it was suddenly abandoned. The team found no signs of destruction, indicating a systematic withdrawal. The timing of the exodus corresponds with a change in Rome’s military strategy on the death of Marcus Aurelius, when his son Commodus ended the Roman Empire’s conflict with Germanic tribes at its northern frontier and consolidated Roman presence at the more easily defended Lauriacum.

Other finds suggested that rather than dispersing, at least some of the town’s citizenry moved to Lauriacum along with the military. “We discovered bronze casting tools and the same fibulae—that is, garment pins—that were also found in stone in the city,” says Grabherr. Supporting this theory, the population of Lauriacum increased threefold over the next fifty years, with the deserted settlement now being used as a quarry.

The identity of the town at Stein remains uncertain. However, its coordinates agree surprisingly well with a contemporaneous description by Ptolemy of a settlement called Claudivium. But regardless of whether it is Ptolemy’s Claudivium, researchers say, the discovery offers them an unprecedented look into a fleeting, but decisive, moment in Roman history.