Neckar-Odenwald Limes

Map with route of the Odenwald Limes (red line, left) with locations of towers, camps, settlements or well known remains of a villa rustica as well as descriptions of military divisions; right: the line of the so-called Anterior Limes, which replaced the Neckar-Odenwald Limes around 160/165 AD.

The Neckar-Odenwald Limes (German: Neckar-Odenwald-Limes) is a collective term for two, very different early sections of the Upper Germanic-Rhaetian Limes, a Roman defensive frontier line that may have been utilised during slightly different periods in history. The Neckar-Odenwald Limes consists of the northern Odenwald Limes (Odenwaldlimes), a cross-country limes with camps, watchtowers and palisades, which linked the River Main (Latin: Moenus) with the Neckar (Latin: Nicer), and the adjoining southern Neckar Limes (Neckarlimes), which in earlier research was seen as a typical 'riverine limes' (German: Nasser Limes; Latin: limes ripa), whereby the river replaced the function of the palisade as an approach obstacle. More recent research has thrown a different light on this way of viewing things that means may have to be relativized in future.[1] The resulting research is ongoing.

  1. ^ Stephan Bender: Unser Bild vom Neckarlimes: bald nur noch Geschichte? (pdf; 6.0 MB). In: Archäologie in Deutschland. 3/2011, Theiss, Stuttgart, 2011, ISSN 0176-8522, pp. 38f.