The School of Archaeology at Oxford University has used remote sensing to find three new Roman walled settlements in northern Arabia. Their study, which was released today (Thurs) in the journal Antiquity, claims that the discovery could be proof of an unrecorded military expedition that crossed south-eastern Jordan and entered Saudi Arabia.

Satellite images were used to locate the encampment. They might have been a part of a hitherto unrecognized Roman military operation connected to the Roman conquest of the Nabataean Kingdom in AD 106 CE, a civilization centered on the Jordanian city of Petra that is famous around the world.

There is little doubt, according to Dr. Michael Fradley, who oversaw the investigation and was the one to discover the camps on Google Earth. He claims, “Given the traditional playing card shape of the enclosures with opposing entrances along each side, we are almost convinced they were built by the Roman army. The westernmost camp is substantially larger than the two camps to the east, and it is the only noteworthy variation between them.”

“These camps are a spectacular new find and an important new insight into Roman campaigning in Arabia,” says Dr. Mike Bishop, an authority on the Roman military. Temporary camps reveal how Rome originally came into possession of a province; Roman forts and fortifications demonstrate how Rome ruled a province.

When on campaign, the army would have constructed the camps as temporary defended stations. “The level of preservation of the camps is really remarkable, especially given that they may have only been used for a matter of days or weeks,” Dr. Fradley continues.They used a side caravan route that connected Bayir and Dûmat al-Jandal. This proposes a tactic to avoid taking the Wadi Sirhan's busier path, giving the attack a surprise element. It is incredible to witness this historical event on such a grand scale.

These marching camps, if we are correct in dating them to the early second century, suggest the Roman annexation of the Nabataean Kingdom following the death of the last king, Rabbel II Soter in AD 106, was not an entirely straightforward affair, and that Rome moved quickly to secure the kingdom, according to Professor Andrew Wilson, a co-author on the paper.

Since the distance between each camp is 37 to 44 km, the team hypothesizes that it was too far for infantry to travel in a day and that it was instead constructed by a cavalry unit that could traverse such desolate terrain in a day, perhaps on camels.

There is also a hypothesis that another camp may have been situated farther west at the later Umayyad fort and well station at Bayir based on the distance between the camps.

The recently found camps go directly into Dûmat al-Jandal, which is currently in Saudi Arabia but was once a town in the eastern part of the Nabataean kingdom. It implies that Rome had to impose its rule, in contrast to the Roman history that has survived, which contends that the change of control occurred peacefully at the end of the last Nabataean king's reign.

There are other problems that need to be addressed, but archaeologists still need to corroborate the dates of the sites by fieldwork. Why does the western camp have twice as many people as the other two, wonders Professor Wilson? If so, where did the other half of the force go? Did the force split? Was it partially destroyed in a battle, or did they stay in the western camp to replenish the water supply to the other camps?