Investigation of the late-Roman burial chamber at Reichertsberg in Trier by NMR depth profiling

Trier is the oldest City in Germany with many relicts of the Roman empire. One of them is the burial chamber at Reichertsberg. Since its discovery in 1967 it has been excavated and secured with protecting outer walls. Located largely intact in a mountain slope at the back of a school yard it had been neglected until a detailed study 30 years later. In an effort to draw attention to its deteriorating state of preservation, the interior decorations were investigated in September 2025 along with NMR depth profiling of the plaster layers applied at three different occasions in the 3 rd to 4 th century AD. The NMR measurements are reported here along with an estimation of the moisture flux inside the plaster cover of a naturally wet inner wall. • NMR depth profiles were measured into the plaster layers of a Roman burial chamber • Comparison of depth profiles confirms different building phases • Moisture flux inside a wet wall was extimated with Fick’s first law • Alignment sensors for the sensitive slice of the NMR-MOUSE were tested