One of the most legendary disasters of the Roman Empire occurred in AD 9, when three legions were massacred by a union of Germanic tribes at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
In 2016 a new discovery of coins reinforced the theory that the place where it was fought is the Kalkriese hill , in Lower Saxony.
Since the end of the 1980s, excavations carried out on the site have found human bones and more than 5,000 Roman objects , including military equipment such as Roman swords and daggers, javelin and spear fragments, arrowheads, sling stones, helmets, sandal nails, belts, armor, and even skeletons of the mules that carried the impedimenta.
One of the best known objects found at the site is an imperial mask , the oldest of those found so far. And along with all this, more everyday objects also appeared, such as keys, scales, weights, hammers, buckets, rings, needles, saucepans, etc.
The 2016 excavations brought to light 8 gold coins, twice the number found so far, which constitute a discovery of great importance, which reinforces the theory that Kalkriese is indeed the exact place of the battle, or at least one of the main scenes of the conflict that lasted about three days.
The coins are gold coins issued by Augustus to celebrate the adoption of his grandchildren Lucius and Gaius in the year 2 BC . On one side appears the effigy of the emperor, and on the other that of his grandchildren. Therefore, they are prior to the date of the battle . All eight were found together, and archaeologists think they may have fallen out of the bag of an officer trying to escape the tragedy.
Kalkriese barely rises 157 meters, near Bramsche, in the district of Osnabrück. Between the hill and the surrounding swampy areas is an area of cultivation some 220 mechos wide, which the researchers identify as saltus Teutoburgiensis Roman.
Excavations on the hill itself cover an area of 17 square kilometers around it, but archaeologists were still not 100% convinced that this was the site of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest.
The findings, among which there are also weapons and military equipment of different types, only come to reinforce that theory, although since the year 2000 the place has a Museum and Archaeological Park of the battle. It may seem strange or surprising to many that, in view of everything found in Kalkriese, archaeologists continue to have doubts. But the fact is that they still do not have definitive and irrefutable evidence, so the excavations continue in search of it.