'Sensational discovery' of 2,000-year-old Roman military camp found hidden in the Swiss Alps

Researchers have discovered a 2,000-year-old Roman military camp hidden in the mountains of Switzerland.

The site is located in the Alps of eastern Switzerland and northern Italy, at an elevation of 7,200 feet (2,220 meters). During Roman times, it was protected by three ditches and a defensive wall known as a rampart. The camp, which dates to the first century B.C., is located at a spot overlooking a known Roman-era battlefield, according to a translated statement from the Canton of Graubünden, an administrative region in eastern Switzerland.

In 2023, a "volunteer detectorist" found the hidden camp while using information from lidar (light detection and ranging), in which lasers are beamed from an aircraft and the reflected light is used to create a topographical map of the landscape.

Prior to this, researchers had known only about the battlefield, which sits about 2,950 feet (900 m) below the camp. 

Related: Ancient Roman walls discovered in Swiss Alps are an 'archaeological sensation'

Researchers determined that the camp was at a "strategically favorable location" and that the site would have offered ample views of the surrounding valleys below. The "sensational discovery" of the camp also reveals that Roman forces would have had to march across mountain passes to access the site more than 2,000 years ago.

Further exploration of the site from "Roman Switzerland" has revealed a wealth of Roman artifacts, including weapons, slingshots and shoe nails, according to the statement. The slingshots contain the stamp of the third legion, a unit of the Imperial Roman army that was known to have fought at the battlefield below, showing a likely link between it and the military camp above it.