The city archaeologist involved in last week’s find was also the archaeologist at the time. Erik Graafstal has been interested in Roman history around Utrecht since his early childhood. In 1997, he had just become a city archaeologist when he received a message on his voicemail that wooden poles could be seen in a construction hole: “At first we didn’t know what we were seeing, we actually thought it was a river embankment. Until we discovered that we were looking at a boxwork with gravel in between and we realised: this is the Limesweg! It had been sought by archaeologists for decades, but not even an inch of it had ever been found.”
Back in time to that other Roman excavation
