The Orientation of the Plan of Novaesium, a Roman Fort on the Rhine

Abstract

Novaesium was a Roman fort on the Rhine, a fort which served for the campaigns of Augustus and Drusus against Germans. The plan is the standard one of the Roman camps. Here we discuss its orientation. It has its decumanus having, as far as we can see from archaeological surveys, an azimuth of about 118 degrees. The fort has a perfect orientation "secundum naturam", as we can see from Spaceborne Digital Elevation Models. In 1869, Heinrich Nissen proposed in his Das Templum, that roman camps and towns were "templa", and that their orientation was based on the direction of the sunrise on the day of their foundation. In the case that this castrum, its via principalis, were oriented according to the sunrise, in the framework of the general Nissen's proposal, it could had been founded on November 13 or February 1 (Julian dates). We will also discuss the orientation according to geometry, in the framework of Roman varatio.

Keywords: Archaeoastronomy, Julian Calendar, Modern Ephemerides, Spaceborne Digital Elevation Models