Roman
sling shot found by Major Tony Clunn in Summer 1988.[7]
Clunn searched for
Roman coins with a
metal detector as a hobby. In 1987, when he was attached to the Royal Tank Regiment in
Osnabrück, he asked
Wolfgang Schlüter, at the time the archaeologist for the
District of Osnabrück,[8] where he should look.[9] He was advised to search 20 km north of the city, where Roman coins had previously been found,[10] though none for 18 years.
Schlüter's recommendation was based upon a study of maps and the 19th-century historian
Theodor Mommsen's proposal that the Kalkriese area was a likely location of the battle which took place in 9 C.E.[11] On his first day, Clunn found several coins from the reign of
Augustus, mostly in excellent condition.[9] No coins found at the site post-date 9 C.E.[12] He also discovered Roman
sling shot in the vicinity of Kalkriese,[9] the first indisputable evidence of military activity there.[12][13] Previously there had been many conflicting theories about the location of the battle, and scholars had searched for it without success for 600 years.[10][14][15][16]
On the basis of Clunn's findings, Schlüter began a comprehensive excavation of the site in 1989,[8][10] later directed by Susanne Wilbers-Rost.[9][12] His finds are now displayed at the Varusschlacht (Varus Battle) Museum and Park Kalkriese, opened in 2002.[9][12] In the following years, Clunn investigated the entire area around Kalkriese. The coins he discovered have made it possible to reconstruct the route taken by the Roman legionaries under
Varus and to determine where they were ambushed and massacred. In Clunn's opinion, the march route corresponds exactly to the changing environment as described by
Dio Cassius.[17]
^Wolfgang Schlüter: Zwischen Lutherdamm und Oberesch – Die Anfänge des Kalkriese-Projektes. In: Varus-Gesellschaft (Hrsg.): Varus-Kurier. Georgsmarienhütte, April 2002. S. 7ff. (in German)
^
abcdeFergus M. Bordewich, "The Ambush that Changed History", Smithsonian September 2005, pp.
3,–
4.
^
abcPeter S. Wells, The Battle That Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the Slaughter of the Legions in the Teutoburg Forest, New York: Norton, 2003,
ISBN0-393-02028-2,
p. 46.
^Theodor Mommsen, "Die Örtlichkeit der Varusschlacht", Berlin: Weidmann, 1885. (in German)
^Wolfgang Schlüter with Frank Berger, Kalkriese – Römer im Osnabrücker Land: archäologische Forschungen zur Varusschlacht, Bramsche: Rasch, 1993,
ISBN3-922469-76-0,
p. 20. (in German)
^Pat Southern, The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History, Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2006,
ISBN1-85109-730-9,
p. 307.
^Tony Clunn, ed. Anna Cheeseman-Clunn and Ursula Cheeseman, In Quest of the Lost Legions: The Varusschlacht, London: Minerva, 1999;
ISBN0-7541-1068-0,
p. 154.
^"Society for German-American Studies Symposium Held in Grand Rapids, MI", Steuben News,
July/August 2005Archived 28 July 2011 at the
Wayback Machine, retrieved 7 September 2010. Clunn was the keynote speaker.
Wolfgang Schlüter. "Kalkriese: Ort der Varusschlacht. Die Ausgrabungen in der Kalkrieser-Niederwedder Senke". Archäologische Mitteilungen aus Nordwestdeutschland Beiheft 9 (1994). (in German)