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A vast network of dozens of Roman army camps has been discovered in a mountainous region in northern Spain.
The camps show how great the Roman army was around 2,000 years ago during the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula.
“They reveal the intense Roman activity at the entrance to the Cantabrian mountains during the last phase of the Roman conquest of Hispania,” explains study co-author João Fonte, landscape archaeologist at the University of Exeter in England said in a press release.
The remains of the 66 camps, intended for training and shelter, were discovered using remote sensing technology. They range from small forts of a few thousand square feet to large fortified enclosures of 37 acres (15 hectares) and help explain how the Romans succeeded in their 200-year battle to conquer the Iberian Peninsula from the indigenous peoples.
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The large number of soldiers accommodated in these camps meant that they could attack the local inhabitants from different directions.
The Roman army set up these temporary settlements when “moving through hostile territory or when performing maneuvers around their permanent bases,” Fonte said. They were strategically placed to help soldiers get through the cold winter months without leaving their posts.
One of the great goals of the Bloody Conquest was to gain access to the region’s natural resources, such as believe and gold.
“We identified so many sites because we used different types of remote sensing,” Fonte said. The team analyzed aerial photography and satellite imagery, including Google Earth, created 3D models of the terrain, and used drones to create detailed maps of the area.
Most of the sites were found near where the Romans later established important cities.
The results were detailed on December 2 in the journal Geosciences.
Originally posted on Live Science.
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