Negative vegetation features of a Roman villa rustica in a wheat field

At the end of April 2019, Klaus Leidorf discovered a previously unknown, almost complete villa rustica on the basis of negative vegetation features in a winter wheat field^[1]. During a second survey in early June 2019, the vegetation characteristics were much worse due to the rainy May. After the author learned of this new discovery, the new site was flown by drone in late June 2019. Contrary to expectations, the images again show the ground plans of the villa rustica in the mature winter wheat excellently.

Fig. 1: Negative vegetation features of the entire farmstead (date of photograph 27.06.2019).

On the basis of the many individual photographs taken during this aerial survey, a detailed, georeferenced orthophoto of the entire complex could be created with the help of software^[2]. At least 10 buildings with stone foundations are clearly visible, including the characteristic main building with corner risalites and hypocaust rooms and probably a small bathing building.

At the time of grain ripening shortly before the harvest, the newly found archaeological monument was flown over again.

Auch im reifen Weizen ist die Gesamtanlage gut zu erkennen (Aufnahmedatum 17.07.2019) — Fig. 2: The overall plant is also clearly visible in the mature wheat (date of recording 17.07.2019).

^[1] Linck 2020_1
^[2] Linck 2020_2