Archaeologists have unearthed evidence that men, women and children were subjected to violence within their communities in ancient Scandinavia — and that these victims were buried in unusual places, such as pits or wells or under a family's house or yard.

During the Scandinavian Iron Age and Viking Age (from roughly 500 B.C. to A.D. 1050), violent encounters between individuals and communities steadily increased, resulting in archaeological evidence of elite warrior burials and mass graves from battles.

To better understand the context of violence in the Iron and Viking ages, researchers analyzed 192 human bones from people buried in domestic areas at settlements in what are now Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

"The fact is that not all bodies ended up in monumental burial mounds in the Iron and Viking Ages, or even in more modest urnfields and cemeteries," the researchers wrote in a study published Sept. 28 in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. Rather, some bodies — or pieces of bodies — were placed in postholes, pits, floors, wells, houses, yards and feasting halls.

The archaeologists discovered that at least 12 of the individuals had sustained a violent injury around the time of death. Half of those cases involved head trauma, while four people suffered multiple injuries. Most of the victims of violence were adult males, but there were two females and a child as well.

In one Iron Age house in Denmark, built sometime between 500 and 1 B.C., archaeologists discovered a frontal bone from the skull of a child who died between the ages of 2 and 4 years old.

"Our DNA analyses show that it is a small boy who has been cut with a sword," study first author Marianne Hem Eriksen, an archaeologist at the National Museum of Denmark, said in a translated statement. "The child's skull was placed on the floor of a house where people continued to live. This means that someone has walked over a child's skull day after day."

Radiocarbon dating revealed that the child's skull is significantly older than the house itself, by as many as two centuries, suggesting the bone may have been kept for some time before being placed in the house floor, according to the study.

At a Viking Age site dated to around 750 to 1050, archaeologists found a young woman's skull in a well near a cluster of four small houses. "The woman's skull bore traces of blows and was buried in a well," Eriksen said. She may have been cut or slashed with a sword or ax and, like the child, her bones may have been kept for a significant amount of time before being buried in the well. "These glimpses of lives lived from the past show how fascinatingly different people must have thought about life and death," Eriksen said.

And at the Viking Age site of Gammel Lejre, a royal feasting hall that many experts consider to be the inspiration for the epic Old English poem "Beowulf," archaeologists found the burial of a man whose skeleton bore numerous blunt force injuries, several of which had healed, and which attested to a difficult and likely painful life. His skeleton was discovered directly south of the feasting hall.

The study of bones in domestic areas "opens up a completely new understanding of Iron Age society, of the occurrence of violence and of the handling of the dead," Eriksen said. "The results show a much greater complexity in the everyday life and world of imagination of the time than we often attribute to Iron Age people."

But it is unclear exactly why these particular people were the victims of violence and why they were buried in such unusual ways. One possible scenario, the researchers wrote in the study, is that these were victims of violent domestic encounters rather than warfare. Their deaths may also have been the result of socially acceptable corporal punishment or some form of aggression within the community.

Given the increase in social inequality and rise in violence in the Iron and Viking ages, the researchers suspect that precarious community members may have been targeted.

"Not all lives were equally grieved and commemorated in the Iron and Viking Ages of Scandinavia," the researchers wrote. "We may question whether some lives were already considered disposable."

See how much you know about ancient norsemen with our Viking quiz!

Archaeologists have discovered a temple dedicated to the Roman war god Mars in the wooded foothills of the Taunus mountains in Germany. The temple was part of a military settlement that was built in the third century to defend the border of the Roman Empire against Germanic tribes.

The Roman military constructed thousands of forts across Europe, northern Africa and western Asia while expanding the empire, and most of these fortifications had an adjacent settlement, called a "vicus," that was occupied primarily by merchants, families and other civilians.

Since 2024, archaeologists have been excavating the Kapersburg Roman fort and its adjacent vicus in Hesse, roughly 16 miles (26 kilometers) north of Frankfurt, according to a Sept. 25 translated statement from the Hessen State Office for Monument Preservation.

One of the highlights of the current excavation is the unexpected discovery of a Roman temple, Kai Mückenberger, an archaeologist with Hessen Archaeology, a part of the Hesse State Office for Monument Preservation, said in a translated video. "Inside the temple, we found several fragments of a dedicatory inscription," he said. Experts have already translated a portion of the inscription, which mentions that the temple was dedicated to Mars, the Roman god of war.

"We also have the remains of a Mars [statue]," Mückenberger said, as well as a statuette of "a winged figure holding a palm branch and laurel wreath," which is likely the ancient Roman goddess Victoria, a personification of victory in battle.

When archaeologists first excavated the Kapersburg fort near the turn of the 20th century, they discovered that it was built in the early second century, likely under either Emperor Trajan, who ruled from A.D. 98 to 117, or Emperor Hadrian, who reigned from A.D. 117 to 138 and expanded the Roman Empire further into northern England, building Hadrian's Wall. The Kapersburg fort was used by a unit of Roman soldiers and cavalry for about a century and a half, until around A.D. 275.

Although the fort's defensive structures and some of its walls have been visible since antiquity, practically nothing was known about its nearby vicus prior to the excavations that began in 2024, according to Mückenberger.

"The astonishing thing is the exquisite preservation of the archaeological layers that start right beneath the forest floor," Mückenberger said. These layers, which include burnt material, almost never survive in agricultural areas but have been well preserved at the vicus. "This is an incredible learning process and a gain in knowledge for us," Mückenberger added.

During their excavations, the research team discovered far fewer houses than they expected. However, they found much more evidence of craft activities, such as blacksmith pits and ovens for drying wheat and baking bread.

"These are all very technical elements related to local services, indicating that we're in a kind of intermediate area not directly adjacent to the fort itself, but perhaps more like the fort's craft area," Mückenberger said.

The temple and votive statues provide new insight into the Roman world of beliefs on the border of the empire, according to the statement. But when the fort was no longer useful, the Romans leveled the camp and replaced it with residential buildings, the archaeologists discovered.

Mückenberger and his team plan to continue their excavation of the site next year.

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This colorful ceramic urn depicts a person wearing a jaguar costume and surrounded by human skulls, about to be received into the Maya underworld. The urn once held the bones of an ancestor for their descendants to venerate.

The urn was anonymously gifted to The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore in 2008. According to the museum, the urn is about 17.5 inches (44.5 centimeters) tall and was likely produced in Guatemala by the K'iche' Maya people more than a millennium ago. Originally, the urn probably had an elaborate lid that was tied on with string through the loops near the lip of the vessel, but it is now missing.

The decoration on the urn is striking. A person wearing a jaguar costume splashed with blood — claws and teeth bared — looks out at the viewer from the center of the urn. This individual may be a deceased ruler who is entering the world of the dead, which is symbolized by two pairs of human skulls and the dark figures of two Maya gods of the underworld. Behind the underworld gods are raised spikes representing thorns of the tropical kapok tree (Ceiba pentandra).

The Maya believed that the kapok tree, which was also called the Maya "world tree" or the Yaxche, had roots in the aquatic underworld, so its depiction on this funerary urn may reflect how it is a conduit between realms, according to The Walters Art Museum. Jaguars also held important spiritual meaning to the Maya; they were thought to move fluidly between the three realms — sky, Earth and underworld. Therefore, the depiction of the deceased ruler wearing a jaguar costume to enter the underworld may have suggested that they could also mediate between the world of the living and the Maya gods.

This colorful and symbol-laden urn shows that death was not an ending for the Maya, according to The Walters Art Museum, and that the urn "serves as a graphic reminder of how the dissolution of the body could be a positive change, transforming a beloved ancestor into an honored spirit who would continue to guide the living for eternity."

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In the Kingdom of Benin, one of the oldest monarchies in West Africa, a traditional ruler known as an oba would commission a brass or bronze bust of their predecessor upon taking the throne. The bust of the past oba would then be set on an ancestral altar in the palace. But when the British Empire annexed the Kingdom of Benin into colonial Nigeria in 1897, the British looted thousands of African artifacts spanning the kingdom's seven-century history, and the country of Nigeria has asked that they be returned.

This particular bust is in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), which acquired it from prominent French art dealer Louis Carré, who sold many of the artifacts looted from Benin to Western museums in the 1930s. This head of an oba ancestor, also known as "uhunmwun-elao" in the Edo language spoken in the historic Kingdom of Benin, is roughly 1 foot (30 centimeters) tall and was made from a copper alloy, using a lost-wax casting process that would produce one unique bust, then-CMA curator William Milliken wrote in a 1937 study.

Initially, CMA experts thought the ancestral head represented a princess, due to the layers of coral necklaces around the oba's neck and the thin braids hanging from the individual's temples. But the coral necklaces and the lattice-pattern beaded caps were actually potent representations of a ruler's power. The top of the bust is partly open, and it would have supported an intricately carved elephant tusk that recorded the oba's accomplishments and major life events.

Many of the surviving ancestral commemorative heads were created in the 15th and 16th centuries by the Igun Eronmwon, a hereditary guild of brass and bronze artisans that made objects for royalty in the Kingdom of Benin. According to the CMA, Benin royalty prized brass because it does not corrode. Much of the African brass was imported from as far away as Germany.

When British forces invaded the Benin royal palace in 1897, they looted thousands of metal plaques, sculptures of humans and animal figures, and royal and personal ornaments that have come to be known as the Benin Bronzes, even though most of the objects are technically brass, an alloy of copper and zinc. The British Museum holds the world's largest collection of Benin brass artifacts — over 900 objects — which Nigeria formally requested be returned in 2021.

Some institutions have begun repatriating this historic royal art back to its homeland. A group of German museums that collectively held over 1,100 of these objects transferred ownership of them to Nigeria in 2022. That same year, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art transferred ownership of 29 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. And, in 2025, the Netherlands returned 119 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. To date, however, the British Museum has not officially returned any of the Benin Bronzes in its collection.

There is also controversy about who should have ownership of these artifacts. In 2025, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston returned two Benin Bronzes to Oba Ewuare II, the great-great-grandson of the last oba before the 1897 British invasion. Oba Ewuare II is the Oba of Benin and custodian of Benin culture.

A full catalog of royal artifacts looted from Benin in the late 19th century can be found on the Digital Benin project website.

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Archaeologists excavating in southwestern China have discovered a cave that was used by Denisovans for more than 100,000 years. Five human fossils, scores of stone tools, and hundreds of animal bones recovered from the cave reveal for the first time that the enigmatic Denisovans thrived in a forested environment where they hunted and ate large game animals.

Denisovans were a lineage of humans who lived in Asia and went extinct around 30,000 years ago. Ancient DNA has shown that Denisovans, Neanderthals and modern humans (Homo sapiens) are distantly related and that all three groups interbred in the past. But while archaeologists have found numerous Neanderthal and modern-human skeletons, Denisovans are known from only a handful of fragmentary fossils scattered from Siberia to Laos. This lack of evidence has severely limited experts' understanding of Denisovans' bodies and their culture.

In two studies published Wednesday (Sept. 9) in the journal Nature, researchers detailed their excavation of Bianfu Cave in southwestern China. Animal bones and ancient tools revealed that the cave was used from 190,000 to 70,000 years ago, and five human fossils dating to between 134,000 and 167,000 years ago confirmed that the people who used the cave were Denisovans.

Bianfu Cave is in the Yunnan province of southwestern China. In 2019, archaeologists excavated several stratigraphic layers of the cave and discovered nearly 1,400 stone artifacts, more than 64,000 mammal bones, and four teeth from an unknown human lineage. The Yunnan area is where Denisovans and modern humans are known to have met and mated, so researchers were unsure which group had used tools to butcher animals inside Bianfu Cave.

In one study, a research team used a technique called zooarchaeology by mass spectrometry (ZooMS) to quickly and efficiently screen the bone fragments from Bianfu Cave. ZooMS is a form of protein analysis that involves extracting collagen from the bones of an unknown species and comparing the protein pattern to the unique "fingerprint" of reference animals.

When the researchers applied the ZooMS technique to the Bianfu Cave bones, they discovered that three of the fragments had a collagen pattern found in members of the Homo genus. Then, using proteomic analysis, the researchers found that two teeth and three bones from Bianfu Cave had a particular amino acid variation linking the fossil remains with Denisovans.

Denisovans are still poorly understood, in part because no complete skeleton has ever been found. Most of the Denisovan fossils that experts have studied are pieces of the skull and teeth. A tiny finger bone and a rib fragment were all that had been found of Denisovans' bodies before the Bianfu Cave excavation. But one of the three bones identified as Denisovan through ZooMS was a fragment of a radius, one of the paired bones in the forearm. It is the only Denisovan radius found to date.

The newly discovered radius has a large head (where it connects to the humerus at the elbow) that is more similar to those seen in Neanderthals than in modern humans, but its overall shape is more similar to modern-human radii, the researchers wrote in one of the new studies. The fact that the Denisovan radius was shaped more similarly to the radius in humans "likely provided functional advantages for lightweight, precise manipulation," study co-author Qiaomei Fu, director of the Ancient DNA Laboratory at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing, told Live Science in an email.

The unique features of the Denisovan radius also suggests that the Denisovans living near Bianfu Cave had different biomechanical demands on their bodies and different behavioral adaptations, the researchers noted.

Denisovan stone and bone tools

In a related study, researchers looked at the entire cultural sequence from Bianfu Cave to work out what Denisovans were doing there.

Of the nearly 1,400 stone artifacts recovered from the cave, there were about 200 flake tools, many of which were made from a sedimentary rock called sandy mudstone. These tools left marks on a number of animal bones discovered in the cave, suggesting that Denisovans regularly hunted, butchered and extracted marrow from cow- and deer-like animals, the researchers wrote in the study.

But the stone tools found at Bianfu Cave are different from the more sophisticated ones that Neanderthals made around the same time. The Denisovan stone tools appear to have been crafted quickly and efficiently from locally available materials, according to the study. The researchers, however, discovered that Denisovans at Bianfu Cave were also making bone tools, which Neanderthals did as well. This suggests that bone tool use may have been more widespread among Pleistocene human groups than experts previously thought, the researchers wrote, and it highlights the need to better understand the human evolutionary record of eastern Asia.

Although the studies have contributed new information to archaeologists' understanding of the enigmatic Denisovans, more work needs to be done, according to the researchers.

"We hope that similar proteomic analyses will aid in the identification of further Denisovan long bones in the future," Huiyun Rao, an associate professor at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and colleagues wrote, "to further understand the adaptive behavior of Denisovans in response to climate change or competitive pressure from contemporary hominins."

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When archaeologists with the National Museum of Denmark excavated a burial mound called Guldhøj (Gold Hill) in southern Jutland in 1891, they were surprised to find a well-preserved wooden folding chair similar to those known from ancient Egypt and Greece. But the Guldhøj folding chair was made in Denmark around 3,400 years ago and is the only completely preserved chair from the Bronze Age in Europe, according to the National Museum of Denmark.

The chair was discovered in the grave of a chieftain, who was buried in a hollowed-out oak tree trunk and wrapped in a cowhide. The man had been dressed in a wool cloak secured with a bronze brooch, two wool hats, woolen mittens and leather shoes. Among the offerings his loved ones left in the grave were a bronze ax and a bronze dagger, along with two ornate wooden bowls and a wooden box. But the folding chair was an unusual addition to the grave and was likely a marker of the man's extremely high status.

The frame of the Guldhøj folding chair was crafted from ash wood, while the seat was made from otter skin, only a fragment of which was preserved over the millennia. Patterns incised into the top of the wooden frame were inlaid with a black, tar-like substance to create a band of geometric decoration.

In a 1999 study led by archaeologist Kirsten Prangsgaard, researchers who examined the chair determined that it was made from two frames of wood, each about 13 inches (33 centimeters) tall. When the frames were put together at a 45-degree angle, the low chair or stool would have been around 9.5 inches (24 cm) off the ground. Originally, the chair frame was likely held together with bronze nails, which may have been removed before the seat was placed in the grave, according to the researchers.

Folding chairs may seem simple, but they were important pieces of furniture that signified the seated person was of high rank, and they were likely used in rituals or ceremonies, according to the National Museum of Denmark.

Archaeologists have found ancient folding chairs in this style in Bronze Age Egypt and Greece, where weather conditions are better for preserving organic material such as wood. The Guldhøj folding chair is not unique in Nordic countries; pieces of chairs have been found in other chieftain graves in Denmark and northern Germany, and a rare metal folding chair was even found in an early medieval woman's grave in Germany. However, it is the only completely preserved wooden folding chair from Bronze Age Europe, Prangsgaard and colleagues noted in the study. "The folding chairs thus seem to belong to the warrior graves of the Early Bronze Age," they wrote.

The similarity of the Guldhøj chair, which was made in Denmark, to chairs found in far-flung civilizations means that Bronze Age people were exchanging ideas through trade and gift giving, the researchers wrote. The chairs show a clear artistic connection between Bronze Age Nordic and Mediterranean groups. Another connection is the four-spoked wheel on the famous Sun Chariot from Trundholm, which mimics designs seen in the Aegean region.

Both the unusual folding chair and the wooden bowls buried with the Bronze Age chieftain in the Guldhøj mound "can only be described as rare objects of high prestige," according to the National Museum of Denmark.

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Nearly two millennia ago, a wealthy Roman commissioned an intricate, multicolored floor mosaic that depicted two beloved household animals: a cat named Emerald and a dog named Ocean. The mosaic was a key feature of a villa, which archaeologists recently unearthed from beneath the ancient city of Adramytteion on Turkey's Aegean coast.

Within the Roman villa, which has been dated to the late second to third centuries A.D., archaeologists discovered three halls surrounding a central atrium. In one room, which likely functioned as the villa's main reception hall, archaeologists found a colorful mosaic with 15 separate panels depicting living and mythological creatures.

In a study forthcoming in the Journal of Mosaic Research, archaeologist Hüseyin Özgen, head of the Adramytteion research team at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, wrote that the 15 panels are centered around what appears to be a depiction of Medusa, while the named cat and dog may preserve the memory of household creatures.

Özgen began excavating at Adramytteion in 2012, but he and his team discovered the Roman villa only recently and excavated it in 2025 and early 2026. In the Roman period, Adramytteion was a provincial capital within Asia Minor and a prime trading spot due to its location at the head of a gulf on the Aegean Sea. The impressive villa included three mosaic-paved halls, a number of secondary rooms, and a network of pipes and drains that may have connected to a latrine.

Visitors approaching from the courtyard of the villa would have been greeted by the largest, most elaborate mosaic in the residence, according to Özgen. Located in the middle of the room, the mosaic measures about 16.4 by 11.8 feet (5 by 3.6 meters) and contains 15 panels arranged in three rows. Most of the panels depict birds, fish and felines, but two mythologically inspired panels include a gorgon (possibly Medusa) and a winged horse (possibly Pegasus). Ancient artists used white, black, red, orange, yellow, pink, burgundy, blue, turquoise and green tiles to create the intricate design.

Only two of the animals depicted in the mosaic are named. As someone entered the room, the first mosaic panel they would have seen to their left was a pale cat seated on a blue-green cushion, Özgen wrote in the study. Above the cat are the Greek letters ΖΜΑΡΑΓΔΙΝ (Zmaragdin), meaning emerald. The relaxed cat sitting on a cushion suggests that Emerald may have been a pet rather than a stray.

One possible explanation for Emerald's name may be a link to the desert of Roman Egypt, where emeralds were mined in antiquity; the villa owner may have been a merchant with North African connections.

On the right side as someone entered the room was a mosaic panel depicting a running or leaping dog. This animal is labeled with the Greek letters ΩΚΕΑΝΟΣ (Okeanos), meaning ocean. Adramytteion was a harbor city, so Ocean's name may have been bestowed due to his surroundings, according to Özgen.

Emerald and Ocean were likely familiar to the villa's residents, even if they weren't specifically pets, Özgen wrote, and their depictions in the mosaic may have functioned as familiar signs of ownership and household identity.

Research at Adramytteion by Özgen and the project team is ongoing.

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Archaeologists were excavating in a Roman-period cemetery in Poland when they came across something extremely unusual: the grave of a man who was buried with two decapitated human heads, a necklace made from 42 mammal teeth, and a battle ax. That ax provided an important clue: He was actually from the Stone Age, three millennia older than the Roman cemetery.

"We were practically packing up, and then we discovered a circular shape in the ground and began digging," Paweł Dąbrowski, a biological anthropologist at Wrocław Medical University, said in a Sept. 2 translated statement. "We found fairly well-preserved animal teeth arranged in a necklace."

The grave, which was found near Wrocław in southwest Poland, included the nearly complete skeleton of an adult male who was buried with amber beads, a flint blade and a battle ax made of serpentinite, a greenish metamorphic rock. The style of the stone ax suggests the burial was made around 2900 B.C., during the Middle Neolithic period (New Stone Age), according to the statement.

But a handful of teeth and bones that were also deposited in the grave as funeral offerings made the burial stand out as particularly unusual.

"The arrangement of the 42 teeth was precise," Dąbrowski said, "and upon further inspection, it turned out that all of them had holes drilled through their roots. They must have formed a kind of necklace."

The teeth that made up the necklace were incisors and canines that belonged to large mammals, such as wolves, deer, bears and potentially humans, Dąbrowski said in a Sept. 4 translated statement.

"It's possible we've discovered the grave of a warrior or hunter, but because of this necklace, we can assume it was someone important, for example, the leader of a family clan," Dąbrowski said.

The burial also contained the remains of two human skulls, which the archaeologists think may be from decapitated heads that were buried with the man as gifts or funeral offerings. However, further analysis of the skulls is needed to confirm or rule out decapitation, according to the first statement.

A similar elite person's burial filled with axes, flint tools and amber beads was previously discovered nearby, the researchers noted in the statements. In that case, the bones of a calf suggested that the animal had been sacrificed at the grave. But to date, these are the only two burials of their kind in the area. According to the statements, they might be from members of the Corded Ware culture, which likely spread Indo-European languages around Europe and Asia.

According to Dąbrowski, the next step is to analyze the remains from both Stone Age burials to figure out if the people were related and what their lives were like nearly 5,000 years ago. He expects the first results of the analyses to be available later this year.

What do you know about the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic eras? Find out with our Stone Age quiz.

Archaeologists excavating in eastern Serbia have discovered the remains of a lavish and uniquely constructed Roman bath that once belonged to an emperor. The suite of rooms ‪—‬ which included heated floors, three bathing pools and a sauna ‪—‬ was uncovered at the bottom of a tower within an imperial palace, a design archaeologists had never seen before in the Roman Empire.

The bath complex, known in Latin as a balneum, was found at the archaeological site of Vrelo-Šarkamen, a monumental fortified residential complex that was built in the early fourth century and was occupied by Maximinus Daza (or Daia), who was Roman emperor from 310 to 313. Archaeologists have been excavating at Vrelo-Šarkamen on and off for decades, and the latest discovery was made by a research team from the Institute of Archaeology, an independent research institution in Serbia, according to a Sept. 3 statement.

Galerius Valerius Maximinus, born in what is now Serbia and originally named Daza, was one of the four Roman "tetrarchs." In A.D. 293, Emperor Diocletian essentially split the Roman Empire into two halves — Eastern and Western — and each was administered by a senior emperor and a junior ruler. By 305, the rulers of the Roman Empire were Constantius and Galerius as senior emperors and Severus and Maximinus Daza as junior rulers, but the tetrarchy had begun to fall apart. Maximinus claimed the title of senior emperor in 301 but lasted only three years. He died in 313 after losing a civil war against his rival, Licinius.

The new excavations at Maximinus Daza's imperial residence have revealed that the palace was even more complex and luxurious than previously thought, according to the statement.

Maximinus' palace had a monumental tower in the southwest corner. But archaeologists were surprised to find a circular bath complex on the lowest level of the tower, as most ancient balnea were oriented linearly, with rooms in a row. This bath area had a domed ceiling with six windows, which shows a high level of engineering knowledge, according to the statement.

The balneum was split into two sections: one for equipment needed to run the baths and one for bathing and relaxing. Within the equipment room, archaeologists found the furnace that heated the bath's floors. They also discovered the base for a copper boiler that would have been used to heat up bath water. However, the copper boiler itself is now missing.

Within the suite of rooms that the emperor used, archaeologists found three bathing pools or tubs, along with a sudatorium, the Latin word for a steam bath or sauna.

According to the statement, "the complex was not simply a space intended for personal hygiene, but a carefully designed private bath intended for high-status residents of the palace, in which architecture, technical infrastructure and comfort formed a single functional whole."

Researchers will continue to explore the bath complex to better understand how the rooms were structured and how Emperor Maximinus and his family accessed it.

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At the beginning of the 20th century, a German art collector acquired dozens of artifacts from a Russian-led excavation of an ancient Hun settlement in Crimea. The most spectacular piece of the collection was the Crown of Kerch ‪—‬ a garnet-studded, gold diadem featuring stylized birds of prey.

The artifact, which is now on display at the Neues Museum in Berlin, is made up of three gold-covered, bronze plaques and more than 250 gem-studded cells. According to the museum, the crown was discovered in the grave of a high-status woman buried in the ancient city of Pantikapaion on what is now the Kerch Peninsula of Crimea.

The band of the rare gold diadem is roughly 1.7 inches (4.4 centimeters) tall and is associated with the fearsome nomadic warriors known as the Huns, who moved west from the Don River in what is now Russia in the late fourth century A.D.

Pantikapaion was founded as a Greek colony in the sixth century B.C. but was conquered by the Huns in the late fourth century A.D. A large necropolis with as many as 2,000 burials was excavated at Pantikapaion in the early 20th century, but only a handful of artifacts and skulls were saved from the excavation. Pantikapaion was incorporated into the Byzantine Empire in the sixth century by Emperor Justinian I.

The Crown of Kerch features two stylized heads of birds of prey, likely eagles, flanking a central floral motif. Round, green gems mark the birds' eyes. These birds likely represented power and authority among the Huns and other groups, according to the museum, and they were a popular symbol on jewelry and accessories of the time. Similar birds of prey have been found on Visigoth women's jewelry in Spain from the sixth century, for example.

German archaeologist Joachim Werner wrote in a 1956 study that the Crown of Kerch was found in a burial chamber near the skeleton of a woman with an artificially modified skull. Although the woman was buried with the diadem, Werner believed that these items were not just used for grave goods, and that high-status Hun women regularly wore the accessory during life, possibly with a cloth cap or veil attached.

Around two dozen examples of similar gold diadems have been discovered to date. This suggests that the Crown of Kerch is not technically the royal insignia of a queen but rather a diadem worn 1,600 years ago by a member of the ruling Hun elite.

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Archaeologists excavating near the ancient town of Aspendos in Turkey have discovered the grave of a person who may have been a pro athlete over two millennia ago.

"Coins with depictions of wrestlers and other artifacts found in the tomb indicate that the person buried here may have been involved in sports, perhaps even a wrestler," Mehmet Nuri Ersoy, Turkey's minister of culture and tourism, said in a translated statement Monday (Aug. 10).

The archaeologists found the skeleton and artifacts in a box-style sarcophagus made of stone slabs while digging in one of the cemeteries outside Aspendos. The tomb likely dates to between 475 and 300 B.C., during the city's Classical period, according to the statement.

Aspendos was a Greco-Roman city in southwest Turkey, roughly 10 miles (16 kilometers) inland from the Mediterranean Sea. The city was founded by Greek colonists in the fifth century B.C. and quickly rose to prominence as a trading center for salt, olive oil, wood and horses. Aspendos had a large Greek gymnasium as well as a large stadium that was erected in the second century A.D. and could hold up to 8,000 spectators who watched footraces, javelin contests and wrestling.

The ancient sport of wrestling is linked to Aspendos primarily through the city's coinage. Aspendos minted its own silver coins with the image of two naked wrestlers on one side.

These coins, called staters, were minted for well over a century, which suggests wrestling held civic significance for Aspendos, Oğuz Tekin, an archaeologist at Koç University in Turkey, suggested in a 2000 study.

Although wrestler-type Aspendos coins were discovered in the newly excavated grave, it is unclear whether the deceased was a wrestler.

"There will need to be much more analysis before a positive identification of the body as a wrestler can be determined," Sarah E. Bond, a historian at the University of Iowa who was not involved in the discovery, told Live Science. For example, signs of a broken and healed nose could indicate the person was an athlete.

"Coins alone cannot indicate this was a Classical era Greek wrestler," Bond said, because "these coins were numerous and used as payment by the entire populace, not by wrestlers alone."

The grave is part of the ongoing excavation of a newly discovered cemetery at Aspendos, according to Ersoy. "With every new find in Aspendos, we will continue to complete the missing pages of our history, protect our cultural heritage through scientific studies, and carry it into the future," he said in the statement.

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This tall, conical hat made from a single sheet of hammered gold was likely worn by an ancient priest during a sun cult ceremony. The Berlin gold hat is the best preserved example of only four Bronze Age accessories of this type that have been found in Central and Western Europe.

The gold hat is in the collection of the Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Berlin. The museum acquired the artifact in 1996 after it circulated on the antiquities market. As a result, it is unclear where the hat was found, but the other three known Bronze Age gold hats were discovered in southern Germany and western France.

The hat is roughly 29 inches (74 centimeters) tall and weighs just over 1 pound (480 grams). It is accented with a flat bronze band with a bronze wire bordering its brim. A wool or felt lining was likely worn underneath the gold hat to stabilize it, but no traces of a lining remain.

Bands of decoration on the Berlin gold hat make the artifact stand out. The repeated motifs of concentric circles, disks, ovals and other symbols encode numerical values that correspond to a calendar, archaeologist Wilfried Menghin argued in a 2008 study. Each band represents a numerical value, and combinations of bands can help calculate lunar months and solar years, as well as convert between lunar and solar dates. The calendar can also be used to predict lunar eclipses.

"The person who wore this hat was the carrier of secret and very special knowledge," Matthias Wemhoff, director of the Museum of Prehistory and Early History, said in a translated 2018 video. Wemhoff described the hat's wearer as a priest who may have come out on a mountaintop at sunrise. The glistening gold hat would have caught the sun's first morning rays, dazzling the other participants in the ceremony.

Although there are no historical records of a Bronze Age sun cult in Europe, other astonishing artifacts, such as the Trundholm Sun Chariot and the Nebra Sky Disk, showcase the importance of celestial bodies to these prehistoric societies.

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A century ago, American archaeologists excavating at a cave site in France unearthed a cache of seven rock crystal tools made by Neanderthals. The discovery was one of the first to prove that Neanderthals were not the unintelligent brutes that many scientists of the time believed they were.

This rare quartz scraper was found at the archaeological site of Abri Des Merveilles in the Dordogne region of France in 1924 by a team from the American School of Prehistoric Research (now a department at Harvard University) led by George MacCurdy. The unique tool is now in the collection of France's National Archaeological Museum.

Neanderthals typically crafted their stone tools from flint or chert because these rocks would predictably fracture into sharp edges. But a small handful of Neanderthal sites in Europe have yielded tools made from microcrystalline quartz, also known as rock crystal, resulting in stunningly clear scrapers and points.

According to MacCurdy's April 1931 excavation report, this was the first rock crystal tool the team discovered. It is transparent but yellow-tinged, and it may have been used as a combination scraper and point. In addition to six other rock crystal tools, MacCurdy found tiny rock crystal chips that meant the tools were likely fashioned on-site in the cave. The rocks may have tumbled downstream from the headwaters of the Vézère, a tributary of the Dordogne River that runs near the site. Abri des Merveilles has never been precisely dated. However, based on stratigraphy, tool types and the presence of a Neanderthal molar, the rock crystal tools were likely made between 45,000 and 80,000 years ago.

MacCurdy's discovery proved that Neanderthals, not modern humans (Homo sapiens), were the first to create innovative tools from rock crystal ‪—‬ a conclusion that surprised many scientists of the time.

A century ago, most experts believed that Neanderthals were ape-like and unintelligent, thanks in large part to paleoanthropologist Marcellin Boule's 1909 analysis of a Neanderthal skeleton from the site of La Chapelle-aux-Saints in France. The skeleton of an older male Neanderthal with osteoarthritis influenced Boule's incorrect characterization of Neanderthals as knuckle-dragging cavemen. This perception of Neanderthals lasted well into the 21st century, when paleogeneticists finally proved that Neanderthals and modern humans mated.

MacCurdy, however, saw the rock crystal tools as an indication that Neanderthals had a sense of aesthetics. "We are accustomed to think of Neandertal man as devoid of the artistic sense," he wrote, because, a century ago, archaeologists had not yet found evidence of Neanderthal rock art, carved artifacts, engravings or use of pigments.

The Neanderthal "was not an artist in the strict sense; that he had an eye for beauty of form and color is evident from even the limited use he made of rock crystal," MacCurdy wrote in the journal PNAS in November 1931. "Neandertal man must also be given credit for discernment of beauty and quality of the material employed in his industry."

According to France's National Archaeological Museum, which profiled this tool as their Object of the Month in September 2025, MacCurdy drew highly innovative conclusions about Neanderthals from the rock crystal tools, which helped pave the way for our modern understanding of our enigmatic extinct cousins.

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Archaeologists excavating in the famous prehistoric Hohle Fels cave in Germany have uncovered two bird figurines carved from mammoth ivory. ‪‪The thumbnail-size carvings add to the existing ‬‬evidence that ice age humans had a sophisticated artistic sense 40,000 years ago.

"The figurines demonstrate that the earliest artists were skilled ivory-carvers, who could depict delicate motifs in miniature form," Nicholas Conard, an archaeologist at the University of Tübingen in Germany and director of excavations at Hohle Fels, said in a July 29 statement.

When the birds were found in 2025, they were lying just 5 feet (1.5 meters) from each other in a layer dating back 40,000 years, according to the statement. The sculptures bring the total number of bird figurines from Hohle Fels up to three; a small water bird was found there in 2001.

Hohle Fels was occupied by early Homo sapiens during the Aurignacian period of prehistory (43,000 to 28,000 years ago), following the decline and disappearance of Neanderthals from Europe. At that time, humans launched a creative explosion, creating the world's first musical instruments, jewelry and small sculptures. The Venus of Hohle Fels, a 41,000-year-old statuette of a woman with exaggerated breasts and buttocks discovered in the cave in 2008, is generally considered the oldest figurative sculpture in Europe. Archaeologists have also found figurines of animals and an ivory rope-making tool at Hohle Fels, a German name that means "hollow rock" in English.

At roughly thumbnail-size, the two new bird carvings are significantly smaller than the figurines found previously at Hohle Fels. Despite their tiny dimensions, "the carvings are not highly stylized but instead include many specific and unique features," Conard said. "The artist has recorded detailed observations that allow us to consider which kind of bird is represented and what the bird could be doing."

One bird appears to be lying on the ground, possibly brooding over its eggs. This position suggests the bird is a ptarmigan, a game bird that is related to chickens and grouse and whose bones have been discovered in the prehistoric layers at Hohle Fels. The second bird has spread wings that are suggestive of flight or posturing in courtship, according to the statement. This bird may also be a ptarmigan, or possibly a bird of prey.

The two tiny ptarmigans raise many new questions about early humans in Europe, Conard said. They are among the earliest evidence of modern humans in Europe, suggesting art was a major feature of early human life. Archaeologists do not know what meaning the carvings held for the Aurignacian people who lived at Hohle Fels, but the objects may have been personal talismans or a symbol of a specific group of people.

Hohle Fels is unique among ice age cave sites because, to date, it is the only one with bird figurines. This may reflect people's keen observations of the natural world around them.

"Our region and landscape have always been the home of a vast range of birds," Stefanie Kölbl, managing director of the Museum of Prehistory and Ice Age Art, said in the statement. "Their calls signaled warnings, and the residents of the region often used their hollow bones and even mammoth ivory to make flutes that produced magical sounds."

The figurines are on display at the Museum of Prehistory and Ice Age Art in Blaubeuren, Germany, through April 4, 2027.

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Using laser scanning technology to peer beneath the dense canopy of the Amazon rainforest, archaeologists have discovered hundreds of ancient earthworks that were made by a complex, enigmatic society over two millennia ago, a new study finds.

This ancient civilization, called the Aquiry, arose 2,500 years ago in Brazil. Based on the large number of earthworks, called geoglyphs, the Aquiry may have had 3 million people before the society collapsed, the researchers suggested in the study.

"The cultures and societies that composed the Aquiry shared a common worldview and constructed ceremonial centers in a variety of monumental geometric forms, characterized by deep ditches and high outer embankments, commonly known as Amazonian geoglyphs," Martti Pärssinen, an archaeologist at the University of Helsinki, told Live Science in an email.

In the new study, published Wednesday (July 29) in the journal Nature, Pärssinen and co-authors presented findings from their survey of nearly 1,740 square miles (4,500 square kilometers) of Amazonian rainforest, which revealed 396 new geoglyphs and allowed them to approximate the geographical extent of the Aquiry civilization.

Pärssinen has been investigating geometric earthworks in Brazil's Acre state for more than two decades. In a 2021 study, he officially introduced the name Aquiry for the multicultural ancient civilization, named after the Acre River, which flows from Peru and Bolivia through the present-day states of Acre and Amazonas in Brazil. Aquiry means "river of caimans" in the language spoken by the Indigenous Arawakan people.

Because of the dense canopy of trees in the rainforest, archaeological investigation in the area has been limited. Most of the evidence for the Aquiry civilization comes from lidar and airborne laser scanning of monumental geoglyphs that were constructed between 600 B.C. and A.D. 850, according to the study. People lived in multifamily longhouses around the earthworks, and they farmed crops like maize and squash.

"According to native oral traditions, the Aquiry centers were built to foster relations among communities" and with significant otherworldly beings, Pärssinen said. These centers also served as venues for gatherings and political decision-making, and they enabled chiefs to display their generosity, he added.

To date, archaeologists have identified around 1,700 known geoglyphs in the area. But the researchers think the total is significantly higher, with more than 20,000 Aquiry earthworks waiting to be found in places that haven't yet been surveyed. And based on an estimate of 300 people needed to build and maintain each geoglyph on average, the researchers estimated that the Aquiry civilization likely peaked at 1.25 million to 3 million people between A.D. 100 and 300.

Similar geoglyphs dating to between 200 B.C. and A.D. 500 have been found in Peru. Known as the Nazca Lines, these earthworks are shaped like animals, humans, plants and fantastical figures, in addition to having geometric motifs. The Nazca were an interconnected regional society of precolonial farmers who were able to survive in a forbidding geographic region, but they lived roughly 1,050 miles (1,700 kilometers) from the Aquiry.

"The Nazca geoglyphs represent a different phenomenon and were probably unrelated to the Aquiry civilization," Pärssinen said. "Nevertheless, in both cases, the straight roads and lines, as well as the geometric forms and motifs, are best appreciated from the air."

The presence of thousands of geoglyphs in the southwest Amazon region is leading archaeologists to rethink assumptions about precolonial civilizations and urban development — but it's also bringing up questions about the fate of the Aquiry.

"We do not know why the geoglyphs were suddenly abandoned between A.D. 850 and 950," Pärssinen said. "The available evidence points to a relatively rapid collapse" that may be related to the disappearance of other major precolonial powers, he said, "including the Classic Maya in Central America and the Tiwanaku and Wari civilizations in the Andes."

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Cut marks suggestive of cannibalism have been discovered on the fossils of an ancient human relative in a cave in Spain, new research finds. But many of the bones from the species, known as Homo antecessor, were from adults ‪—‬ not just children, as previous discoveries had found ‪— adding a new dimension to the cannibalism that was practiced in this area 850,000 years ago.

The two dozen bones and teeth were recently found in Gran Dolina cave, part of the Sierra de Atapuerca archaeological complex in northern Spain, according to a July 24 translated statement from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES). Among the remains were fragments of a skull, spine, arm and leg bones, as well as three teeth from several members of the now-extinct H. antecessor, a relative of modern humans that lived in Europe between about 1.2 million and 770,000 years ago. Several of the bone fragments had cut marks from stone tools.

Over the past few decades, researchers have identified numerous cases of cannibalism at Gran Dolina, meaning H. antecessor is the oldest known human relative to eat its own group members for nutritional reasons. In a 2010 study, researchers noted that most of the evidence of cannibalism at Gran Dolina came from the bones of infants and juveniles, who would have been easier to capture and kill as the young, defenseless members of a rival group. But the newly excavated fossils have upended that assumption.

"The discovery of more adult individuals, some of whom also bear cut marks, demonstrates that cannibalism was not restricted to younger individuals," Palmira Saladié, a biological anthropologist at the IPHES who coordinated the work, said in the statement.

The number of individuals found at Gran Dolina has now risen to at least 13, and about half of them are adults. "The increase in the number of individuals, and especially the addition of more adults, allows us to begin understanding this population from a much more complete perspective than ever before," Andreu Ollé, an archaeologist at the IPHES, said in the statement.

Excavation at Gran Dolina has also brought to light an assemblage of stone tools made from flint, quartzite and sandstone, along with animal bones from hyenas, beavers, deer, horses and rhinoceroses, according to the statement.

Evidence of cannibalism at the site is extensive. Stone tools found in the cave are consistent with the cut marks on the human bones, and the animal bones have revealed butchering techniques that were also used on humans. Some of the human bones also had human bite marks, Saladié told Live Science in 2025, which is the "most reliable evidence that the bodies found at the site were indeed consumed."

But while the practice of cannibalism at Gran Dolina has been confirmed, the reason for it is still unclear. Researchers hope the newly discovered adult bones may help them better understand the practice among H. antecessor groups.

"We have only just begun excavating this new area" at Gran Dolina, Marina Mosquera, an archaeologist at the IPHES, said in the statement, "and the first results already demonstrate its enormous scientific potential."

Further analyses on the bones are now underway to explore questions about age-related differences in cannibalism, the number and length of cannibalistic episodes, and the social organization of H. antecessor, according to the statement.

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The ancient Egyptians sometimes reused crafted materials. This block, which features a battle scene, was likely created during the reign of Amenhotep II between 1427 and 1400 B.C., during the 18th dynasty. But when it was discovered, the block was being used as part of the foundation of the unfinished mortuary temple of Ramesses IV (who ruled from 1153 to 1147 B.C., during the 20th dynasty).

The painted sandstone slab was discovered in Luxor in 1912 by Egyptologist Herbert E. Winlock, who later became the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has the block in its collection. In his original publication describing the artifact, Winlock wrote that it featured a scene of an Egyptian pharaoh slaying his enemies with a bow and arrow. "The block may be taken as one of the best preserved specimens of the great imperial pictorial-relief yet discovered," he wrote.

The excellent preservation of the artifact and its vibrant colors was likely due to its reuse in Ramesses IV's temple foundations, Catharine Roehrig, the Met's curator emerita of Egyptian art, wrote in a 2008 explanation of the relief fragment.

Measuring roughly 24 by 45 inches (61 by 115 centimeters), the painted sandstone carving was likely part of a larger scene depicting an Egyptian pharaoh vanquishing an enemy army, according to Roehrig. The pharaoh's chariot and horses appear in the upper-right corner, while a rival soldier tries to avoid being trampled to death. Three of the enemies have been pierced by arrows.

The pointed beards and distinctive clothing suggest the enemies were ancient Syrians or possibly the Hyksos, a Semitic-speaking foreign dynasty that ruled Egypt from around 1640 to 1530 B.C., during the Second Intermediate Period, James P. Allen, former curator of Egyptian art at the Met, wrote in 2005. The battle scene may therefore reflect historical conflicts fought between dynasty 18 pharaohs like Amenhotep II and Asiatic rulers.

But the relief was unlikely to have been created as a commemoration of a specific historical battle. "Their primary purpose was to portray the pharaoh in his role as the victorious defender of Egypt," Roehrig wrote.

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Archaeologists in El Salvador have uncovered the unusual burial of a face-down human skeleton that was interred along with a ceramic vessel shaped like a sea turtle nearly 3,000 years ago. The burial may be from a pre-Maya civilization that practiced human sacrifice.

According to a translated statement from El Salvador's Ministry of Culture, the burial was found July 2 in Antiguo Cuscatlán, a suburb of San Salvador, during excavation work directed by Carlos Flores Manzano, an archaeologist and doctoral student at Yale University.

Although the skeleton has not been radiocarbon-dated yet, it was discovered underneath a layer of volcanic ash from an eruption of the Plan de la Laguna volcanic crater thought to date to between 850 and 830 B.C., during the Middle Preclassic period (roughly 1000 to 400 B.C.) in Mesoamerica.

During this period, societies in southeastern Mesoamerica were becoming more sedentary and developing more complex cultures, archaeologists have found. But in addition to the archaeological remains of crop cultivation and painted ceramics discovered over the years in Antiguo Cuscatlán, experts have pointed to some burials as evidence of human sacrifice — and the newly uncovered burial may be similar.

In the late 1970s, archaeologist William R. Fowler excavated at Chalchuapa, an ancient town east of Antiguo Cuscatlán with thousands of years' worth of history. While digging in an area known as Structure E3-7, Fowler found 33 human skeletons — mostly adult males — that he interpreted as sacrifices of war captives due to signs that their feet and arms were bound.

According to the El Salvador Ministry of Culture's statement, the newly uncovered burial is likely not the only one in the area. Archaeologists may eventually find a burial mound with several dozen skeletons, similar to what Fowler uncovered at Chalchuapa. However, Fowler's interpretation of human sacrifice has been questioned in recent years, including by Flores Manzano in a 2020 study.

Instead of being linked to sacrifice, the unusual burial position might be related to an ancient understanding of the cosmos and underworld, Flores Manzano told Diario El Salvador. If that's the case, the sea turtle ceramic vessel found near the skeleton's hand may be associated with Orion's Belt, which features in later Maya astronomy as part of a sacred journey.

The fragile burial was encased in plaster before being removed for further study. Flores Manzano said the skeleton will now undergo chemical analysis so researchers can learn more about the individual's life, diet and possible cause of death. He expects the analyses to take about a year, after which the results will be announced to the public.

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Archaeologists have uncovered a rare and unusual burial of premature twins in a 1,200-year-old tomb near the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in Turkey. Although the burial was found in an abandoned latrine, researchers think the intention was to protect the babies in the afterlife.

"This interment was made in an unexpected and exceptional setting," Lilli Zabrana, an archaeologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences who co-authored a new study detailing the discovery, told Live Science in an email. Burials previously discovered at Ephesus were made in a dedicated cemetery outside the boundaries of the ancient temple.

"What is even more unusual is that the burial contains two premature infants, who were probably twins, which is a rather rare occurrence," study co-author Caroline Partiot, a bioarchaeologist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, told Live Science in an email. Evidence of a rare genetic condition found in one of the infants makes the finding even more unique, the researchers noted.

In the study, published online July 13 in the journal Childhood in the Past, Partiot and Zabrana analyzed bones found in a tomb that was likely built in the eighth to ninth century, during the middle Byzantine era. The grave was placed within an abandoned latrine channel, originally built during the second or third century, Zabrana said, but the latrine was a later addition to a Roman odeum — a building used for musical performances — that was built in the first century within the sacred area of the famous Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), which was originally built around 550 B.C.

When excavators opened the cist, or stone-lined grave, they saw two tiny skeletons buried side by side. Based primarily on the size of the bones, Partiot and Zabrana estimated the skeletons were from infants who were likely born prematurely at around 33 to 34 gestational weeks, or 7.5 months in utero. (A full-term pregnancy typically lasts between 39 and 40 weeks.)

"The hypothesis that they were twins is based on the fact that they have very similar ages at death and were buried in direct contact with one another," Partiot said. "However, it will only be possible to confirm whether they were indeed twins through future DNA analyses."

Although the researchers did not find any evidence of trauma or disease on the babies' skeletons, they did notice a rare bone called a supernumerary cervical rib. This hereditary trait involves the growth of an extra rib bone that forms at the back of the neck in about 1% of people and usually doesn't cause any problems. However, Partiot has found that, in babies, there is an association between cervical ribs and anomalies in Hox genes — a group of genes that code for specific body parts during embryonic development — that can lead to stillbirth, prematurity or sudden infant death.

"To the best of our knowledge, no cases of twins with cervical ribs have been documented in an archaeological context" before this one, the researchers wrote.

The twins may have been buried in an odd location outside the known burial grounds at Ephesus because they died as premature infants who probably hadn't been baptized yet, the researchers proposed. The infants' final resting place was likely a kind of "practical compromise" between Christian burial practices and local customs, the researchers wrote in the study.

The team found no evidence of the twins' mother nearby or in the Ephesus cemetery. "It is possible she died at the same time, but it is also possible that she did not; it is difficult to say," Partiot said. "Both infant mortality and maternal mortality were very high at the time."

But the twins' protective cist grave preserved their skeletons for more than a millennium, which "clearly indicates that this was a respectful burial rather than the disposal of human remains," Zabrana said. Ultimately, the tomb reveals a family's "intention to care for the two deceased infants in death, and to acknowledge their fleeting place within the community," the researchers wrote.

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Archaeologists in Slovakia have uncovered a large Roman military camp likely used by Marcus Aurelius' troops during conflicts with Germanic tribes in the late second century. The "extremely rare" camp came as a surprise to archaeologists, as it holds the hastily buried remains of numerous soldiers in unusual graves, including wells.

Remains of the 18.2-acre (7.4 hectare) camp were found near the town of Šurany in southwestern Slovakia, according to a translated July 17 statement from MH Invest, which excavated the area along with the Institute of Archaeology at the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAS).

"We have a unique opportunity to explore practically an entire Roman marching camp, which is extremely rare in the European context," Matej Ruttkay, director of the SAS Institute of Archaeology, said in the statement. "We are clearly investigating a place that disappeared immediately after the military conflict between the Romans and the Germans."

Between A.D. 166 and 180, the Romans fought a series of battles against a Germanic people called the Marcomanni, who lived north of the Danube River along the border of the Roman Empire in what are now Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Marcus Aurelius, who reigned as Roman emperor from 161 to 180, commanded troops in the Marcomannic Wars with the goal of defending and securing Rome's border against barbarian invasions. But the wars ended upon Marcus Aurelius' death, when his son Commodus negotiated a peace with the Marcomanni, according to third-century Roman historian Cassius Dio.

The newly discovered Roman military camp had clear defensive characteristics, including five entrance gates, fortifications, and a curved ditch-and-rampart system typical of marching or legionary camps, according to the statement. The Šurany camp is only the second Roman military installation ever found in western Slovakia; the first camp, discovered in 2024 by SAS archaeologists, is thought to be where Marcus Aurelius wrote part of his Meditations.

The Šurany camp surprised archaeologists with a large number of skeletons — and parts of skeletons — buried in ditches, wells and hastily dug shallow graves, according to the statement.

"Our preliminary findings indicate that in most cases these are Roman soldiers," Marek Vojteček, an archaeologist at the SAS Institute of Archaeology, said in the statement. "Numerous components of Roman military equipment and weaponry were also found with the skeletal remains, such as spears, arrowheads, parts of helmets, segmented and scale armor, legionary brooches, coins, and the characteristic 'caligae' military sandals, from which iron nails on the soles have been preserved," he said.

X-ray analysis of blocks of clay revealed the intact sandal nails, which are now stored at the SAS Institute of Archaeology's specialized laboratory for further analysis. "It is literally a miracle to see the original footwear of a Roman soldier and even to be able to determine its size," Michal Cheben, an archaeologist at the SAS Institute of Archaeology, said in the statement.

The unusual burials raise important questions about the use and abandonment of this Roman military camp, according to Cheben, including whether the soldiers died from combat injuries or disease and why the bodies weren't looted before being thrown into storage pits and wells. "Laboratory analyses and further genetic and anthropological research may provide answers," Cheben said.

Because the camp was so large and the artifacts so numerous, a comprehensive analysis of the site will take several years and will involve international experts in carbon dating, soil analysis, isotopic analysis and ancient DNA, according to the statement.

"This is a long-term process, so many results will only become known in the coming years," Ruttkay said.

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