Een lange reis! Hoe een Romeins wetsteentje uit Kreta in Leuth terecht kon komen

Abstract

At Leuth, close to the city of Nijmegen a small Early Roman rural settlement was excavated in 2014. One of the finds was a small, rectangular whetstone that turned out to be made of novaculite, which can be translated as ‘razor-stone’. Macroscopic and microscopic analysis as well as an XRF analysis showed that the stone probably originates from Ladakona on Crete, in the Mediterranean. The whetstones from Crete were well known in Roman times. They are mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia as being the best available and also in the Digesta, as Julius Ceasar regulated the trade in Cretan hones under his reign. While this proves that there was a well-established trade in Cretan whetstones, it is hard to imagine that the whetstone reached Leuth by trade, as the transport of stone is very expensive. It is argued that the whetstone was brought from the Mediterranean as the personal property of a Roman soldier from the Legio X Gemina, which was stationed at Nijmegen between AD 70 and 104.