ABSTRACT
As in most countries, the history of excavations in the Netherlands starts with painful stories about the destruction of archaeological sites during digging activities without any scholarly aim, documentation or record of the finds. The first excavations in the Netherlands with Caspar Jacob Christiaan Reuvens as a field director started in 1827 on the site of the ancient Roman settlement of Forum Hadriani. Forum Hadriani is mentioned on the late Roman Peutinger Map, south of the river Rhine, which formed the border of the Roman empire: the exact location of the Roman town had aroused scholarly interest since the seventeenth century. The Fossa Corbulonis, constructed by the Roman general Corbulo around Ad 47 between the river Rhine and the Helinium used a number of natural creeks and newly dug canals to create a passage between the two important rivers, behind the dunes and the North Sea.
