While the construction crews presented dirt to renew a football field in Vienna last October, they occurred when an unprecedented discovery: a pile of interlocking skeleton in a mass grave dating back to the Roman Empire in the first century, probably the bodies of the warriors who were killed in a battle involving the Jeragian tribes.
This week, after the archaeological analysis, experts at the Vienna Museum made a public offer for the first time – linked to a “catastrophic event in a military context” and evidence of the first known fight in that region.
The bodies of 129 people were confirmed at the site in the Vienna neighborhood of boiling. The drilling teams also found many of the ousted bones and believed that the total number of bodies can exceed 150 – a discovery that they said would be unprecedented in the middle Europe.
“In the context of the Romanian war, there are no similar discoveries for the fighters. There are huge battlefields in Germany where weapons were found,” said Michaella Bender, who led the archaeological drilling.
Soldiers are usually burned in the Roman Empire until the third century.
The hole indicates that the bodies are deposited to the mantle or unorganized bodies. Each skeleton showed signs of infection – on the head, trunk and pelvis in particular.
“They have many different battles wounds, which exclude execution. It is really a battlefield. There are wounds of swords, spears; wounds of severe shock,” said Christina Adler Wolf, head of the archaeological department in Vienna.
The dead are all male. Most of them were between 20 and 30 years old and generally showed signs of good teeth healthy.
Carbon 14 analysis helped in the history of the bone between 80 and AD130. This was examined against the handicrafts in the grave-shield, Hama, the cheek of helmet and nails used in distinctive Roman military shoes known as the name Caligae.
One of the largest evidence was the presence of a dagger specifically the type of use between the middle of the first century and the beginning of the second.
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To date, only one victim has been confirmed as a Roman Corps. Archaeologists hope to help in analyzing the Strontium counterpart to increase the recognition of the fighters, who were on their side.
Adler Wolf said: “The most likely theory at the present time is that this is linked to the campaigns of the Emperor Dometian-86 to 96 AD.”
Archaeologists said they also found signs of establishing the settlement that would become Vienna.
