Archaeologists Just Uncovered a Rare Roman Helmet That May Indicate a Mysterious Ritual

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Archaeologists Just Uncovered a Rare Roman Helmet That May Indicate a Mysterious Ritual

Fragments of a rare Roman-era helmet were discovered alongside nearly 200 weapons, all buried in the foundations of two homes in Denmark.

The first-of-its-kind find outside the borders of the Roman Empire add a level of intrigue to the origins of the stash.

A surprisingly well-preserved shirt of Iron Age chainmail added another level of significance alongside the helmet, swords, and spears.

Somehow, a Roman-era warrior ended up in Denmark roughly 1,600 years ago with enough weaponry to outfit a small army. He buried the hoard as some sort of offering before either the construction or demolition of two houses, in the process stashing away fragments of a rare Roman

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, impressive chainmail, and nearly 200 spearheads,

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, lances, and

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equipment.

It’s all been found.

As part of an excavation as the Danish Road Directorate is expanding the local highway to three lanes at Løsning Søndermark between Vejle and Horsens in Denmark, researchers made “remarkable finds,”

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to Vejle’s museum organization, of the

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haul buried within the foundations of two structures. Experts believe the way the weapons were situated within the holes for key load-bearing posts show it was an offering to a higher power during demolition and construction.

It took a little sleuthing to figure out that the fragments of “unusual iron plates,” both about the size of a palm of a hand, were pieces from a unique helmet. Using

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imaging, archaeologists looked beneath the layers of rust on the two plates and found one was a neck guard and the other a decorated cheek guard from a crest helmet, popular in the Roman Empire in the fourth century.

“Roman helmet finds from the Iron Age are exceptionally rare in southern Scandinavia, and there are no direct parallels to this discovery,” the museum wrote in a statement, adding this is the first of its kind found in Denmark.

Almost equally rare was the discovery of an “exceptionally well-preserved” chainmail shirt at the site, the first in Scandinavia found tied to a settlement and not a burial or bog find. The

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—reserved for an elite in society due to the expense of purchasing the piece originally—was excavated within a block of soil to allow researchers to more carefully study it later.

The team located fragments of two bronze neck rings, similar to others found belonging to Iron Age rulers, believed to be personal equipment of the chieftain responsible for the weapon burial.

The burial of nearly 200 pieces of weapons were separated between two different homes, one archaeologists believe was made during the demolition of a home, where the weapons were placed in the holes left behind, and the other during the construction of a home, with the equipment tightly packed around load-bearing posts.

“The nature of these deposits suggests that the weapons were part of ceremonies or sacrificial rituals associated with a chieftain’s residence,” the researchers wrote. “This indicates that they are not remnants of a weapons workshop, military barracks, or similar contexts.”

And that raises more questions, which the team hopes to answer by analyzing the material to “hopefully reveal whether the equipment belongs to local warriors or if it represents spoils of war from a defeated army.”

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