Archaeologists Map Lost Roman City in Austria, Possibly Claudivium

Archaeologists from the University of Innsbruck have mapped the remains of a previously unknown Roman town in Lower Austria that researchers believe could be the lost city of Claudivium, abandoned more than 1,800 years ago. The University of Innsbruck announced the find on September 25, and Arkeonews was among the outlets that reported it.

The site lies at the hamlet of Stein/St. Pantaleon-Erla, just a few miles east of the ancient Roman military installation of Lauriacum, itself part of the UNESCO World Heritage site of the Danube Limes. Roman artifacts have surfaced there since the 1970s, but no organized investigation began until 2017, when geophysical surveys exposed a first-century fortification.

Since then, the team has examined aerial photographs and carried out noninvasive magnetic and ground-penetrating radar surveys. The results revealed a settlement with a regular street grid, residential areas, and an amphitheater seating 8,000 spectators, all of it grown up alongside the fort.

Civilian colonies commonly developed near Roman forts, supplying soldiers with goods and services. This one differs in two ways: it appears to have been built to an organized plan rather than growing organically, and it is far larger than expected for such a garrison. "The construction of a 25- to 30-hectare settlement with a street grid for an auxiliary fort with approximately 500 soldiers," says Gerald Grabherr, an archaeologist at the University of Innsbruck, "is unprecedented in the Roman Empire."

Selective excavations added to the picture of a flourishing urban center. The team documented an extensive cemetery and what may have been part of a brewing complex.

The city seems to have existed only between roughly 80 CE and 180 CE. The researchers found no signs of destruction, which points to a systematic withdrawal. The timing matches a shift in Rome's military strategy after the death of Marcus Aurelius, when his son Commodus ended the Marcomannic Wars and consolidated imperial presence at Lauriacum.

The finds suggest the abandoned city's residents moved to Lauriacum together 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. Fifty years later, the base at Lauriacum was about three times the size of the town at the smaller fort, which was by then being quarried for stone.

The town's identity remains unconfirmed. The second-century geographer Ptolemy recorded a settlement called Claudivium, and his description of its coordinates agrees surprisingly well with the site at Stein. Whether or not the identification holds, researchers say the discovery gives them an unprecedented look into this chapter of Roman history on the Danube frontier.