Mass Grave of 150 Roman Soldiers Found Under Vienna Sports Field

Sometime betwixt the mid-first period and aboriginal 2nd period CE, Roman legionaries clashed with Germanic fighters adjacent the Danube River successful a furious battle. Almost 2 1000 years later, gruesome grounds of the bloody lawsuit has travel to light.

While renovating a sports tract successful Vienna successful October of past year, operation workers discovered a wide grave. Experts from the Vienna City Archaeology Department and the archaeological work supplier Novetus GmbH revealed that the quality remains apt belonged to soldiers who died during a conflict involving past Roman legionaries. The find and investigation is elaborate successful a Wien Museum statement published Wednesday.

“In Vienna, 1 is ever prepared to brushwood Roman traces arsenic soon arsenic 1 opens up a pavement oregon opens the earth: aft all, Vindobona laid the instauration chromatic of our city,” Veronica Kaup-Hasler, Vienna’s Executive City Councillor for Culture and Science, said successful the statement. Vindobona was the past Roman subject campy and colony that would 1 time go Vienna. “A existent sensation successful this respect is the find of a Roman wide sedate successful Simmering [a territory successful Vienna]. This unsocial grounds allows america to look astatine the beginnings of our city’s past from a antithetic perspective.”

The wide sedate includes a jumble of quality remains belonging to astir 150 individuals. According to archetypal investigations, they were each men mostly betwixt the ages of 20 and 30 years aged and showed small grounds of infectious diseases. The experts besides noted remarkably bully dental health. While dentists would person been proud, beardown teeth did not prevention them from injuries sustained by daggers, spears, swords, projectiles, and different sorts of weapons, which proved to beryllium their origin of death.

An X-ray representation of the dagger sheath with inlays made of silver. © TimTom, Wien

“Based connected the statement of the skeletons and the information that they are each antheral remains, it tin beryllium ruled retired that the tract was connected to a infirmary oregon akin facility, oregon that an epidemic was the origin of death. The injuries to the bones are intelligibly attributable to combat,” said Michaela Binder, elder anthropologist astatine Novetus GmbH.

As if the injuries weren’t grounds enough, they besides unearthed armor scales, lance tips, a helmet feature piece, footwear nails, and a fragmented robust dagger. The dagger proved particularly utile successful dating the remains. X-ray images of the sheath revealed emblematic past Roman decorations: metallic ligament inlays that intelligibly day the dagger to betwixt the mid-first period and aboriginal 2nd period CE, explained Christoph Öllerer, lawman caput of the Vienna City Archaeology Department. These dates item conscionable however uncommon this find is.

“Since cremations were communal successful the European parts of the Roman Empire astir 100 AD [CE], inhumations are an implicit exception. Finds of Roman skeletons from this play are truthful highly rare,” said Kristina Adler-Wölfl, caput of the Vienna City Archaeology Department.

The find is besides important astatine the section level, due to the fact that it represents the archetypal nonstop archaeological grounds of a conflict on the Danube Limes, which made up portion of the Roman Empire’s eastbound frontier. The regularisation of Emperor Domitian from 81-96 CE saw battles betwixt Roman legionaries and Germanic tribes on the empire’s border, which apt prompted Emperor Trajan’s determination to grow the Danube Limes a abbreviated portion later. Until now, those conflicts had lone been testified by humanities sources, according to the statement.

The conflict that took spot thousands of years agone “could truthful person been a crushed for the enlargement of the formerly tiny subject basal into the legionary campy Vindobona—less than 7 kilometers [4.35 miles] from the site,” explained Martin Mosser, an archaeologist from the City Archaeology Department. The uncovering “may frankincense uncover the opening of Vienna’s municipality history.”