Transportation-Carvings - Land Transportation

Actually, these more thorough posts were intended earlier than the discussion on the Suspension-system in November, and they were thought as an introduction to the carved material found in the northern roman provinces and in Rome herself.

In Rome some of the most prominent buildings show wagons in more scenes, e.g. The Column of Marcus Aurelius on the Piazza Colonna, and the Arch of Septimius Severus (photo right) in the Forum Romanum, but wagons are also represented on sarcophagi, in both mythical and “every-day-life”-scenes.

These are all nice carvings contributing in different contexts, but my personal field of interest is on the carvings from the northern roman provinces, especially from Pannonia (around modern Hungary) and Gallia Belgica (around Germany and Belgium). Most of these stem from burial monuments of some kind, but we do not know that many details about most of the monuments. In Arlon, Belgium, a lot of carvings were found build into a fortifying wall from the end of the third century AD, without any traces of origin or inscription to let us know more about the story of the carvings.

In the roman province of Pannonia, according to the National museum in Budapest, there was a “pre-roman” tradition saying, that dead people was transported into death on a wagon, which is why many tombstones/stelai show a carved wagon along with the grave inscription. Often the type of wagon used is the four-wheeled transport-wagon, as seen on the photo left, but in a few cases, where supposedly dealing with more wealthy persons, the two-wheeled wagon-type, as seen on the photo right, is used. This latter wagon-type is also seen on some city-roman sarcophagi, in a bit different output, though. Here the type is called “Sessel-wagen” in German, but I have not been able to find neither the English nor Latin word for the wagon-type yet. The Latin name would be crucial, though, if one were to make a full typology of the roman wagon types.

 

The Gurthalter and the Roman Suspension System

Originally it was my plan to wait a few posts before getting into a discussion on the roman suspension system on wagons and carts. I wanted to show/discuss some of the wagon-bronzes and their purpose, before actually discussing the suspension system itself.

David Reads comment on my quick-post about the Internet-article: “Roman Traction Systems” made me realize, that this web-log need some more pictures (and posts), especially (perhaps) of carvings, to show what my thesis is all about, and therefore the discussion of the suspension system might be a good place to start.

The primary archaeological material in my thesis is what I earlier on called “the “roman pictures” of roman wagons”, and here I am most concerned with the roman carvings. The group of roman carvings with wagon-scenes is quite large, and it is represented in as well imperial art in Rome as in the grave-sculpture (tombstones and sarcophagi) of common people in the northern roman provinces. It is in this last group we, most often, find some detailed carvings of roman wagons.

A detailed study of all the, to me, known (published) carvings is what I am doing in my thesis, and therefore this post mainly concerns some carvings showing the suspension system. But first a word on the suspension system it self.

The suspension system on roman wagons is a much discussed area of the wagon-construction. Röring et al. presented the system in the late 1970’s early 1980’s reconstruction of the wagon from the Wardertal, Macedonia (now in Cologne/Köln, Römisch-Germanisches Museum). This wagon-reconstruction is mainly made on the basis of metal-finds, which is the same situation as two other wagons that I have knowledge of: The reconstruction of a two-wheeled cart in the Hungarian National Museum, Budapest, and a reconstructed part of a wagon in the Intercisa Múzeum in Dunaújváros, south of Budapest, Hungary. In the last case the reconstructed part is only the small front-section of the wagon whereto the metal-fittings belong.

As Dr. Weller and David Read mentions in the Roman Traction System-article a lot of bronze-fittings for the suspension system have been found across the roman provinces and they are often given the German name “Gurthalter” (I have not yet seen an English name for these metal parts). They exist in more forms, with one or two “arms”, and have various kinds of decoration, some including bronze statuettes. A one-armed is shown on the photo left and a two-armed type is used in the reconstruction of the wagon from Dunaújváros (see photo).

Now for the iconographic part.

I have found some examples of carvings in which I belive the Gurthalter is shown. In the begining, before I saw the carvings my self, I was not sure about the small details I saw in other persons photos. Now after having examined the carvings my self and knowing these details are parts of the original carvings, I do not doubt, that we actually have roman iconography showing this particular detail of the roman wagon construction.

Three carvings, one in Belgium and two in Hungary, show a detail which most of all is to be characterized as a “Gurthalter”. The wagons are all seen from a sideview and therefore only the metalpart, the Gurthalter itself, and not the wooden construction underneath it is visible. Of the three carvings only the one from Belgium (here below) show the function of the Gurthalter; here a rope, the one giving the suspension, is tied to the Gurthalter.

 

The archaeological evidence 2 - The “roman pictures” of roman wagons

The romans made a lot of pictures of how they saw the world and everything in it, and this gallery include pictures, in different quality, style and medium, of various kinds of roman wagons. Therefore we have a large material in this category of archaeological evidence. 

The roman pictures include carvings, paintings and mosaics showing roman wagons, two and four-wheeled vehicles, with/without people and/or goods, wagons in (or in no) motion and pictures with various kinds of wagonparts, mostly wheels. Some of these pictures happen to be very detailed and they are therefore, in my opinion, great evidence in the study of roman wagons.

Here below are some examples of roman picture-work showing roman wagons. All photos are my own.

1. Detail of roman wheel. Carving, Arlon, Belgium

2. Detail of roman wagon. Carving, Budapest, Hungary. 

3. Mosaic showing a fourwheeled wagon, photo in Saalburg, Germany.

4. Bronzemodel of lower part of a wagon, Bonn, Germany

 

The archaeological evidence 1 - The wagonparts

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:

1. The wooden parts
2. The iron fittings
3. 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.