FRANKFURT, GERMANY—Archaeologists from Frankfurt University have discovered a first-century Roman fort in southern Germany, on the east bank of the Rhine River. When the 500 soldiers of the fort's cohort abandoned the site, they dismantled it and filled in its two V-shaped ditches, leaving behind a lot of well-preserved waste. “We filled box after box with shards of fine, coarse and transport ceramics; dating them will allow us to determine when the fort was abandoned with greater accuracy than was possible before,” Hans-Markus von Kaenel of the Goethe University Institute of Archaeology told Science Daily. The team also uncovered the post holes of a wooden defensive tower. Roman finds in the area suggested that there had been a Roman settlement in Gernsheim from the first to the third centuries. “We really hit the jackpot with this excavation campaign. The results are a milestone in reconstructing the history of the Hessian state during Roman times,” he added. To read about the discovery of a Roman military camp in Germany dating to Julius Caesar's time, see ARCHAEOLOGY's "Caesar’s Gallic Outpost."