The battlefield landscape around Kalkriese (near Osnabrück, in north-west Germany) has been widely interpreted as the site of the AD 9 Battle of the Teutoburg, or Varus’ Disaster, but almost since the site’s discovery its identification has been disputed. While the site is accepted as being that of an early first century AD engagement, opinion is divided about the battle that took place there.
For centuries, historians searched for the lost battlefield of the Varian Disaster, in which three Roman legions were ambushed by a Germanic coalition led by the Cherusci chieftain Arminius. The sources give little indication of the battlefield’s location, other than that it lay in a forested area in Germania beyond the Rhine, within an area in the early stages of provincialisation under Varus (but which was abandoned after the battle). In the later nineteenth century, the battlefield was thought to lie around Detmold – in fact, a 53-metre (175 ft) monument to the battle (the , a giant statue of Arminius) was dedicated at the site in 1875. Not all historians were convinced; most notably,
