Dutch Batavians found to be very Romanized

[Michael]

The Batavians, who lived in the Netherlands at the start of the Christian era were far more Roman than was previously thought. After just a few decades of Roman occupation, the Batavians had become so integrated that they cooked, built and bathed in a Roman manner. Dutch researcher Stijn Heeren discovered this during archaeological research.

Heeren studied excavated artefacts and traces of settlements and burial fields in the neighbourhood of Tiel. In Dutch history, the Batavians are often presented as a brave people who resisted a cruel oppressor. But Stijn Heeren has now demonstrated that these 'simple people' also adopted a lot of Roman customs. According to him the small farming communities changed into villages where Roman practices made their entrance.

Read the full article here.

The Batavians are mentioned in many sources. They provided auxiliaries to the Roman armies as far back as the 1st Century BCE. They were among the first Germanic peoples to become aligned with Rome (as something other than slaves). The research described in this article is helping to round out our understanding of the Batavians' relationship with the Romans. It certainly suggests they may have been more Roman than German after a couple hundred years.