Roman fort Hillscheid

The small fortification is located a good kilometer as the crow flies from Hillscheid in the Hillscheider Wald, on the high terrace of a spur of the Montabaurer Höhe extending to the southwest. In Roman times, it was located about 22 meters behind the Limes wall at a point where two ancient roads ascending from the Rhine plain to the ridges of the Westerwald united and crossed the Limes. One of these roads came from the southwest from the next larger garrison, the Niederberg fort, the second led from the Vallendar area.

As late as 1833, the Limes and Roman road researcher Friedrich Wilhelm Schmidt noted well-preserved ramparts and ditches as well as a not inconsiderable height of standing masonry of the fortification in the Hillscheider Wald. Already in 1857, Carl August von Cohausen had to state that only small parts of the complex were still visible. The stones of the masonry had in the meantime been broken out for road construction, and the area had been largely leveled. Subsequently, treasure hunters completed the work of devastation, so that the Imperial Limes Commission was confronted with heavily disturbed findings when it began its investigations. The archaeological excavations of the commission were carried out in the spring of 1894 under the local direction of the section commissioner Otto Dahm. After a break of over a hundred years, new investigations were carried out in 1999 by the Archaeological Heritage Conservation, Koblenz Office. In the spring of 2003, the foundations of the fort and the neighboring watchtower Wp 1/71 were preserved and partially reconstructed by the municipality of Hillscheid.

The small fort of Hillscheid was a double complex, consisting of a larger outer fort and a smaller inner fort. The high degree of destruction of the findings caused considerable difficulties for a reliable interpretation from the beginning of the investigations. The documentation of the findings by the Imperial Limes Commission must also be viewed with certain reservations against this background.