“It was one of the most devastating defeats ever suffered by the Roman Army, and its consequences were the most far-reaching. Wells, a specialist in Iron Age European archaeology at the University of Minnesota and the author of The Battle That Stopped Rome. “This was a battle that changed the course of history,” says Peter S. It was a defeat so catastrophic that it threatened the survival of Rome itself and halted the empire’s conquest of Germany. Ongoing finds-ranging from simple nails to fragments of armor and the remains of fortifications-have verified the innovative guerrilla tactics that according to accounts from the period, neutralized the Romans’ superior weaponry and discipline. 9, three crack legions of Rome’s army were caught in an ambush and annihilated. But it was further proof that one of the pivotal events in European history took place here: in A.D. The sandal nail was a minor discovery, extracted from the soil beneath an overgrown pasture at the base of Kalkriese (the word may derive from Old High German for limestone), a 350-foot-high hill in an area where uplands slope down to the north German plain. Inch by inch, several young archaeologists under her direction are bringing to light a battlefield that was lost for almost 2,000 years, until an off-duty British Army officer stumbled across it in 1987.

Atrim, short-haired woman, Wilbers-Rost has worked at the site, which is ten miles north of the manufacturing city of Osnabrück, Germany, since 1990. “You’re holding a nail from a Roman soldier’s sandal,” she said. Wilbers-Rost, a specialist in early German archaeology, peered through wire-rimmed glasses, brushed away some earth, and handed an object to me.

“This is the soil of 2,000 years ago, where we are standing now,” Susanne Wilbers-Rost was saying as a young volunteer pried a small, dark clod out of it.

Mortal empires map side by side