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# Roman Desert Camps Point to a Lost Campaign in Arabia
- URL: https://romanempiretimes.com/roman-desert-camps-lost-campaign-arabia/
- Published: 2026-10-27T12:22:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-27T12:21:59.000Z
- Description: Three camps east of Bayir trace a possible Roman expedition towards northern Arabia. A 2025 ground survey added pottery to the evidence first published in 2023.
- Author: George Liapis
- Tags: Roman Empire News, roman army, trajan, Nabataeans, Jordan, Bayir, Dûmat al-Jandal

Three temporary Roman camps in southern Jordan mark a possible military route towards northern Arabia. Their alignment across the desert east of Bayir has led an Oxford research team to propose an expedition towards Dûmat al-Jandal, an oasis settlement in the Jawf region of modern Saudi Arabia.

The findings were published in *Antiquity* on 27 April 2023\. The researchers suggested a connection with Rome’s annexation of the Nabataean kingdom under Trajan after AD 106\. That proposed historical setting remains a hypothesis: the camp layouts establish their Roman military character more securely than their precise date.

Subsequent work has taken the investigation from satellite images to the ground. A field visit between 30 September and 2 October 2025 recorded pottery at all three sites, including fragments identified as Nabataean at the western camp. The team’s published account sets out further pottery analysis as the next step towards a clearer chronology.

## Recognising a Roman camp from above

The first clue was a faint rectangular enclosure visible on satellite imagery near the Jordan–Saudi Arabia border. The Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa project, known as EAMENA, was examining the area systematically when it identified the outline. Searching the surrounding terrain revealed two further enclosures to the west.

All three shared the rounded rectangular outline often described as a playing card. Opposing entrances and defensive outworks in front of the gates strengthened the identification. These outworks, called *tituli*, were among the features the researchers used to recognise temporary Roman camps built to protect troops during a campaign.

Aerial photographs taken on 23 November 2022 documented the western and central sites, revealing possible straight-sided internal divisions as well as their outer boundaries. Such survey evidence complements the objects and structures recovered at [excavated Roman camps elsewhere in the empire](https://romanempiretimes.com/roman-camp-in-slovakia-reveals-human-remains-and-military-gear/). Here, the enclosure plans supplied the starting point for reconstructing a march.

## Three stops across the desert

The western camp lies approximately 43.5 kilometres (±27 miles) east-southeast of Bayir and measures about 125 by 105 metres (410 to 345 feet). The central and eastern camps are smaller, each approximately 95 by 65 metres (312 by 213 feet). The difference gives the route a distinctive pattern: a larger enclosure followed by two sites of closely comparable dimensions.

The central camp is around 44.2 kilometres (±27.5 miles) east-southeast of the western one; the next stage to the eastern camp is approximately 37.7 kilometres (±23.5 miles). The three stand on barren limestone and chalk formations west of Wadi Sirhan. Modern vehicle tracks cross the remains, although the initial survey described the sites as relatively stable.

Their direction points towards Dûmat al-Jandal and Sakaka, near the eastern extent of the Nabataean kingdom. The researchers connected the alignment with a proposed minor caravan route from Bayir. They suggested that taking this peripheral route could have helped a force bypass the main Wadi Sirhan corridor or approach as a flanking detachment.

## Long stages suggest mounted troops

The distances between the camps shaped the reconstruction of the force that used them. The study argues that crossing roughly 38 to 44 kilometres (±23.6 to 27.3 miles) of this terrain in a day would favour mounted troops over infantry. Camels were suggested as one possibility for moving through the dry landscape.

The interpretation concerns the pace and organisation of an expedition. Temporary defended stations served troops travelling on campaign, whereas permanent forts supported an established military presence. Read within the wider history of [Roman military organisation](https://romanempiretimes.com/how-did-the-roman-army-evolve-through-the-ages/), the camp sequence offers evidence for movement across a frontier landscape.

Using published models of camp capacity, the study proposed that the largest enclosure might have accommodated two mounted cohorts, with a single cohort in each smaller camp. Those are model-based estimates of the possible contingents, with the central question being why the apparent accommodation requirement fell so sharply after the first station.

## The larger camp and the water problem

One explanation gives the western camp a supporting role. The researchers considered it more likely that part of the force remained within a day’s ride of the wells at Bayir, carrying water to troops advancing east. This would connect the change in camp size with the practical demands of supplying an expedition.

The paper also considered a force dividing into separate columns, with only one route currently identified. Losses before the central camp were another possibility raised in the discussion, rather than an observed battle. Each scenario addresses the same physical contrast between the larger western enclosure and the two smaller camps beyond it.

Bayir itself therefore forms an important part of the investigation. Latin, Greek and Nabataean inscriptions attest earlier activity around the oasis. The 2025 field account describes Roman and Nabataean building stone reused in an Umayyad structure, largely demolished in 1931, linking the route’s western end with a much longer history of occupation.

## A possible link to Trajan’s annexation

The researchers’ preferred setting is the reign of [the emperor Trajan](https://romanempiretimes.com/shaping-a-legend-the-evolution-of-roman-emperor-trajan-reputation/), when the Nabataean kingdom was annexed after the death of its last king, Rabbel II Soter, in AD 106\. Oxford’s announcement presented the camps as possible evidence that securing the kingdom involved a more complicated military operation than the familiar account of a peaceful transfer suggests.

The surviving epitome of Cassius Dio’s *Roman History* records the acquisition of the territory in a brief statement, naming the Roman governor responsible. In Book 68.14.5, the account reads:

> About this time, Palma, the governor of Syria, subdued the part of Arabia around Petra and made it subject to the Romans.

The 2023 study favoured the annexation period over later Roman occupation as the setting for the march. It noted military presence at Hegra by AD 175 and at Dûmat al-Jandal by the third century, when Roman control was already established. Dating the camps would allow that proposed connection between a desert expedition and annexation to be tested against archaeological material.

![Marble portrait head of Emperor Trajan, with short combed hair, displayed against a brick wall in Munich’s Glyptothek.](https://storage.ghost.io/c/aa/80/aa80281a-abce-4f35-865f-05153c8cc335/content/images/2026/10/trajan-portrait-glyptothek-munich-1.jpg)

Marble portrait head of Trajan, Glyptothek, Munich (inv. 336). Photograph: Carole Raddato, [CC BY-SA 2.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/?ref=romanempiretimes.com), via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Head%5Fof%5FTrajan,%5Ffrom%5Fan%5Foversized%5Fstatue%5F%28around%5F2.70%5Fm%5Fheight%29,%5Ffound%5Fin%5F1803%5Fat%5FOstia,%5FGlyptothek,%5FMunich%5F%289014438164%29.jpg?ref=romanempiretimes.com).

## Pottery adds evidence on the ground

The aerial investigation continued after publication. The eastern camp was photographed from the air in 2023\. During that year’s flying, permission to land a helicopter also allowed pottery scatters to be noticed. That observation helped lead to the later field visit covering all three sites.

During the 2025 field trip, a systematic walking survey at the western camp documented small Nabataean pottery fragments. The ditch, low banks and gate outworks were visible and reasonably preserved. Pottery was also recorded at the central and eastern camps; their surrounding earthworks were clearer at the central site than at the eastern one.

In the team’s published account, the next stages were a specialist pottery report and a summary for Jordan’s Department of Antiquities. The three enclosures now combine a mapped route, aerial documentation and surface finds. A firmer chronology would help establish which episode of Rome’s expansion or occupation left this sequence of defended stops across the desert.

#### ****🏛️ Sources used:**

  
[Michael Fradley, Andrew Wilson, Bill Finlayson and Robert Bewley, “A lost campaign? New evidence of Roman temporary camps in northern Arabia,” Antiquity 97.393 (2023), e15, pp. 1–6.](https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2023.50?ref=romanempiretimes.com)

  
[Bob Bewley, Firas Bqa’in, Michael Fradley, Andrew Wilson and Mansour Alka’abneh, “Exploring Jordan’s Eastern Desert: A Field Visit to Newly Identified Roman Camps,” Council for British Research in the Levant.](https://www.cbrl.ac.uk/news/field-trip-to-visit-roman-camps/?ref=romanempiretimes.com)

  
[University of Oxford, “‘Spectacular’ new find: Roman military camps in desert found by Oxford archaeologists using Google Earth,” 27 April 2023.](https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2023-04-27-spectacular-new-find-roman-military-camps-desert-found-oxford-archaeologists-using?ref=romanempiretimes.com)

  
[Cassius Dio, Roman History, epitome of Book 68.14.5, translated by Earnest Cary, Loeb Classical Library VIII (1925), via LacusCurtius.](https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius%5FDio/68%2A.html?ref=romanempiretimes.com#14.5)

  
[Roman Empire Times, “Roman Camp in Slovakia Reveals Human Remains and Military Gear.”](https://romanempiretimes.com/roman-camp-in-slovakia-reveals-human-remains-and-military-gear/)