First thing first; In a thesis concerning roman wagons the first set of evidence need to be the wagons themselves.
In this part the archaeological evidence is, in my opinion, grouped in three different kinds of material:
- The wooden parts
- The iron fittings
- The wagonbronzes (decorative)
The wooden part is the greatest part of the wagon, but it is actually the group of material of which we have the weakest knowledge because of the bad preservation of wood in most archaeological areas and excavations. Luckily we do once in a while find wooden material and in a few cases these bits are wagonparts. Often the wooden wagonparts found is some part of a wheel. It might be because we know how the wheel or a part of it should look like and we therefore recognises it, or it might be due to the fact that wagonwheels in roman (and medieval) times where used to form the bottom part of wells in more areas, which means they had perfect conditions for preservation and thereby survive to our days modern excavations.
There are some known pieces of wooden wagonparts in Italy, but most of the preservated wagonmaterial of wood is found in the northern roman provinces and is therefore now located, among others, in Germany and The Netherlands.
The iron fittings on the other hand is mostly known from archaeological finds in graves or deposits, especially from graves in Hungary and Bulgaria, and from the roman limes in Germany, where a deposit of iron fittings from parts of roman wagons have been found by Neupotz.
The iron parts are used to strengthen the wagon, which means most wagonfittings are used around the wheels and movable parts. Some ironfittings are also used as plates on the upper part of the wagon, but such plates are more common in the next group of wagonparts; the wagonbronzes, which are, for the larger part, ornamental elements in the construction of roman wagons.
The wagonbronzes are often seen as a decorative element in the wagon construction but they sometimes have a more important role to play in the wagons function and comfort.
Wagonbronzes are usually found with other wagonparts in graves and deposits, but because of their economic and ornamental value some are also found in houses and as single finds without any relevant context. On the function of some interesting bronzes I shall return in another post.
