Vienna archaeologists reveal a grave of mass of combatants in the battle of the era of the Roman Empire

Vienne – While the construction teams boiled the dirt to renovate a Vienna football field last October, they arrived on an unprecedented discovery: a bunch of intertwined skeletal remains in a serious mass dating from the Roman Empire of the 1st century, probably the bodies of the warriors in a battle involving Germanic tribes.

Wednesday, after the archaeological analysis, experts from the Vienna Museum made a first public presentation of the tomb – linked to “a catastrophic event in a military context” and evidence of the first known fights in this region.

The bodies of 129 people were confirmed on the site of the Vienna de Mijoter district. The excavation teams have also found many dislocated bones and believe that the total number of victims exceeds 150 – a discovery never seen before in central Europe.

“In the context of Roman acts of war, there are no comparable discoveries of combatants,” said Michaela Binder, who led the archaeological excavation. “There are huge battlefields in Germany where weapons have been found. But find the dead, which is unique for the whole Roman history.”

The soldiers of the Roman Empire were generally cremated until the 3rd century.

The pit where the bodies were deposited suggest a hasty or disorganized spill of corpses. Each skeleton examined has shown signs of injury – head, torso and in particular basin.

“They have different injuries in combat, which excludes execution. It is really a battlefield,” said Kristina Adler-Wölfl, head of the archaeological department of Vienna City. “There are sword injuries, spears; injuries of blunt trauma. “

The victims were all men. Most were 20 to 30 years old and generally showed signs of good dental health.

Carbon 14 analysis helped up the bones between 80 and 130 AD, which were cut against the known history of relics found in the tomb – armor, helmet cheese protectors, the nails used in distinctive military shoes called Caligae.

The most indicative index came from a rusty dagger of a type of use specifically between the middle of the 1st century and the beginning of the second.

Research continues: only one victim was confirmed as a Roman warrior. Archaeologists hope that the analysis of the isotopes of DNA and strontium will help to identify the fighters more and of which they were the side.

“The most likely theory at the moment is that this is linked to the Danube campaigns of the Emperor Domitian – it’s 86 to 96 AD,” said Adler -Wölfl.

The city’s archaeologists said that the discovery also reveals the first signs of the foundation of a colony which would become the Austrian capital today.

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The writer Associated Press Jamey Kealen in Geneva contributed.