A Gold Coin, a Victory Goddess, and the Birth of Vindonissa

For more than ninety years, archaeologists knew that Vindonissa’s earliest Roman military camp had a V-shaped defensive ditch on its southern side. A section had been recorded in Konigsfelden Park in the 1930s. What they did not know was how that ditch continued, where it turned, and how large the first camp actually was. An eleven-month rescue excavation on Zurcherstrasse in Windisch, completed in mid-July 2026 by the Cantonal Archaeology Department of Aargau, finally answered that question, and produced something else alongside it: one of the most exceptional collections of personal and military objects yet recovered from Switzerland’s only Roman legionary fortress.

Vindonissa and Its First Phase

Roman soldiers established a military post at the confluence of the Aare, Reuss and Limmat rivers in central Switzerland during the Alpine campaigns of Emperor Augustus around 15 BC. The position was strategically important, controlling routes through the region, and it developed into a permanent legionary base under Tiberius. At its height, the fortress at Vindonissa covered approximately 20 hectares and accommodated as many as 6,000 soldiers. The 13th Legion built its structures initially in wood and earth. The 21st Legion replaced and expanded them in stone. The 11th Legion remained until Emperor Trajan transferred it toward the Danube in AD 101, after which a civilian settlement continued outside the fortress walls.

The new excavation investigated 2,225 square metres ahead of a residential development project. Around 20 archaeologists documented the remains before they were removed by construction. What the site contained ranged from the formative military phase of Vindonissa’s earliest decades through traces of continued activity extending into the fourth century AD.

The Missing Boundary

The most significant structural discovery was the location of Vindonissa’s earliest defensive system on its southern side. The excavation identified both the V-shaped ditch and the remains of a wood-and-earth rampart associated with the first military camp. The fortification stood approximately 70 metres south of the wall belonging to the later permanent legionary fortress, and beyond the excavation boundary it turned toward the northwest, providing the clearest evidence yet for reconstructing the size and layout of this formative installation.

The rampart was probably built during the early reign of Tiberius, though the artifacts examined so far do not allow a more precise date. One unexpected detail emerged from environmental analysis of the ditch deposits: traces of pioneer vegetation indicating that the defensive system had been allowed to fall into disuse long enough for plants to colonize it before the fortification was repaired and returned to active use. The camp was not maintained continuously from the moment it was built. It was abandoned, reclaimed by the landscape, and then recommissioned.

Where the Soldiers Lived and Worked

Beneath a later Roman road in the western part of the excavation, archaeologists documented a structure measuring nine metres wide and at least 30 metres long, with regularly arranged rooms and antechambers consistent with a legionary barracks. Its survival beneath the road surface, which sealed and protected the earlier building layers, provides an opportunity to examine Vindonissa’s residential organization before the permanent stone fortress replaced the original timber structures.

At the eastern edge of the excavated area, immediately inside the early camp wall, the team identified the remains of what appears to have been a bread oven. Its position within a production or workshop zone behind the rampart fits the pattern of activity areas found immediately inside Roman camp fortifications. Beside it, inside an even earlier building apparently dating from Vindonissa’s founding phase, archaeologists uncovered the carefully constructed hearth of a field forge. The forge, barracks and possible oven together show that this was not a temporary enclosure but an organized settlement capable of housing and supplying a permanent military community from its earliest years.

The Objects That Survived

Large debris layers outside the later legionary fortress produced material spanning centuries: coins ranging from the Roman Republic to Late Antiquity, blacksmithing equipment, leatherworking tools and the lower grinding stone of a Roman hand mill. The range reflects both military and civilian activity in the zone beyond the camp walls across several generations of occupation.

Among these finds, three objects stand apart from the ordinary debris of daily life. A gold aureus minted during the reign of Tiberius is among the most valuable Roman coin denominations, a high-status piece that stands in contrast to the bronze and silver currency that typically dominates site assemblages of this period. At a legionary base during the Tiberian period, such a coin could have belonged to an officer or a soldier of particular means, or might reflect a transaction or circumstance of unusual economic weight.

The second exceptional find is a carnelian gemstone measuring approximately one centimetre across. Its engraved surface depicts Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory, shown holding a staff and wreath. Engraved gemstones of this kind were commonly mounted in finger rings and served simultaneously as personal ornaments, seal devices and expressions of identity and belief. For a soldier at a Roman legionary base, the image of Victoria was not merely decorative. She personified military success, the divine guarantor of imperial power over enemies, and her image on a personal ring would have been a daily statement of the wearer’s place within the Roman military world.

The third group consists of two objects interpreted as possible handles from Roman surgical instruments, one of which appears to terminate in a carefully carved animal head. Roman legions maintained trained medical personnel: physicians and surgeons who treated the wounds, infections and injuries that military life produced in quantity. The two possible scalpel handles remain under conservation and require further analysis before the identification can be confirmed. If it is, they would place organized medical practice within or immediately adjacent to Vindonissa’s earliest phase, adding a dimension to the site that equipment and fortifications alone do not convey.

A Bread Under Analysis

The excavation had already attracted attention earlier in 2026 with the recovery of a small blackened circular object identified as a possible carbonized Roman bread roll. Measuring approximately ten centimetres across and three centimetres thick, it survives because burning converted the organic material into carbon before complete decomposition could occur. The object was extracted in a block of surrounding soil and transferred to the conservation laboratory, where specialist analysis is ongoing. If the identification is confirmed, it would be the first Roman bread recovered in Switzerland, and together with the bread oven identified in the same excavation, would provide direct evidence connecting the production of food with its consumption at this specific location within the early camp.

What Vindonissa’s Earliest Phase Now Looks Like

Switzerland’s only Roman legionary fortress has been studied for well over a century, and the major phases of the permanent stone fortress are comparatively well understood. What the Zurcherstrasse excavation adds is a much clearer picture of what Vindonissa was before the permanent fortress: a military installation with organized barracks, a working forge, a bread oven, soldiers who wore gold coins and Victory gemstones, and medical personnel equipped to perform surgery.

The pioneer vegetation in the defensive ditch reminds researchers that even major military sites had periods of neglect, of reduced use, of the natural world pushing back against stone and timber. The fortifications were repaired. The soldiers returned. The camp became a fortress. The fortress became a city. What the ground on Zurcherstrasse held beneath a development site in 2026 was the beginning of all of that.

Sources

Kantonsarchaeologie Aargau / Kanton Aargau. Official rescue excavation announcement, July 2026. https://www.ag.ch/