In the far northwest of the Arabian Peninsula, on the border between what is known today as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, researchers have spotted the effects of three fortified military camps of a Roman nature, dating back to the year 106 AD.

In the study published on April 27, in the journal Antiquity, researchers at the Faculty of Archeology at the British University of Oxford said that aerial image analyzes indicate that the discovery is likely evidence of an undocumented military campaign that passed through southeastern Jordan into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia. According to the researchers, these camps may have been part of a previously undiscovered Roman military campaign, linked to the Roman takeover of the Nabataean kingdom in the city of Petra in present-day Jordan.

“The most important findings of this research are the identification of three large rectangular enclosures extending east of the archaeological area of ​​Bayer in Ma’an Governorate in southern Jordan. Containers are the typical form of bivouac built by the Roman army during its campaign to provide protection while its troops were in camp,” says lead author of the study Michael Fradley, a postdoctoral researcher in archeology at the University of Oxford who specializes in the archeology of the Middle East and North Africa.

In an interview with The New Arab, Fradley notes that there is little doubt about the history of the camps, but the research team is certain that the Roman army built them, given the typical playing cards shape of containers with opposite entrances along each side. The only noticeable difference is that the western camp is much larger than the two camps to the east.

The researchers believe that these camps are an amazing discovery. It represents an important new insight into the Roman campaigns in Arabia. Roman forts show how Rome controlled a province, but bivouacs reveal how it acquired it in the first place. The army would build camps as temporary stations for defense during the course of the campaign. Fradley adds: “The camps were identified through systematic scanning of satellite imagery on platforms such as Google Earth as part of the work of the Endangered Monuments in the Middle East and North Africa (EAMENA) project. Our colleagues on the APAAME ​​project working with the Royal Jordanian Air Force were then able to take detailed aerial photos of the western and central camps from helicopters.”

The authors hypothesize that the camps run in a direct line towards Dumat al-Jandal in Saudi Arabia, but it was previously a settlement on the eastern edge of the Nabataean kingdom in the second century AD. There is no historically documented account of a Roman military campaign in this region, so researchers believe that the most likely context is that these camps were part of the campaign of Roman annexation of the Nabataean kingdom by Emperor Trajan after 106 AD.

“Roman historical accounts from that period indicate that the annexation of the Nabataean kingdom was peaceful, but these camps indicate that there may have been some resistance from some Nabataean settlements such as Dumat al-Jandal,” explains the lead researcher of the study.

Fradley and his colleagues believe that the level of preservation of the camps indicates that they may have only been used for days or weeks. Given that the distance between each camp ranges from 37 km to 44 km, the team expects that this distance was planned, so that the infantry could not cross it in one day, and instead, the cavalry was responsible for linking them. Scholars also believe that a fourth camp may have been located to the west, near or perhaps on the same site as the later Umayyad fortress and well station at Bayer.

The New Arab