Hundreds of Roman Forts Found in Middle East

Declassified photos captured by United States spy satellites launched during the Cold War have revealed an archaeological treasure trove of previously unknown Roman-era forts.

Credit: Jesse Casana | Antiquity Publications Ltd

Photographs from America's satellite surveillance programs that were designed to support the Carter Doctrine of US dominance of the Middle and Near East in the early 1980s, are now being examined by archaeologists. The declassified aerial images reveal the presence of over one hundred previously unknown forts along the eastern border of the Roman Empire.

The research team from the Department of Anthropology at Dartmouth College have examined the photographs and believe the Roman bastions were not designed for the security of the empire, but for the security of a dynamic and fluid border of trade routes and cultural interchange that the Romans relied on for import and export - as explained under the title 'Wall or Road' published by Cambridge University Press.

The satellite photos reveal the buildings were more like the western garrisons of a fortified corridor with forts on either side of a massive area that stretched eastward all the way through Syria to the Tigris River in Iraq - spanning approximately 116,000 square miles from the Mediterranean to the Tigris. Based on excavations of other Roman sites in the region, the scientists estimate the structures were built between the second and sixth centuries, and represents an eastern border that's roughly 3,500 miles from the Roman Empire's north western border at Hadrian's Wall, in northern England.

This corridor was once a valuable trade route: the Western termini of the Silk Road of the Han Dynasty. Archaeologist Jesse Casana told CNN that it’s her reading of the archaeological literature that even in places as developed and advanced as Rome, borders in this time period “were places of dynamic cultural exchange and movement of goods and ideas,” not barriers.

Now that decades of US wars in this part of the world are finally coming to something resembling an end, archaeologists might soon have the opportunity to properly investigate some of these sites - which may still have important details to reveal.

The northern border fortifications of the Roman Empire are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Could the eastern border be the same in the future?

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