A Construction Crew Was Renovating a Soccer Field—and Found the Bodies of 150 Ancient Roman Soldiers

• Renovations on a soccer field outside of Vienna, Austria, uncovered a Roman-era mass grave that held the remains of roughly 150 males.

• Experts believe the site was likely a battlefield where a “catastrophic event” took place near the end of the first century A.D.

• The style of burial suggested a hasty covering and disorderly burial of males, most of whom were between 20 and 30 years of age.

When construction workers started churning up skeletal remains, a project to renovate a soccer field outside Vienna, Austria, morphed into an archaeological dig, and it wasn’t long before experts realized this field was actually a major discovery in Roman warfare history.

They dug up the remains of potentially 150 males aged between 20 and 30 years, hinting that a “catastrophic event in a military context” happening at the site at the end of the first century A.D.

The discovery of a Roman mass grave—noteworthy in and of itself because the Romans practiced cremation in Europe until the third century A.D.—could be “evidence from the immediate history of the founding of Vienna,” according to a translated statement from the Wien Museum, which announced the discovery.

The archaeologists, brought in by the Federal Monuments Office after the soccer field renovation project started unearthing human bones, discovered that an oval pit roughly 16 feet in diameter and less than two feet deep contained the remains of around 150 peoples—the team discovered 129 individuals, but due to the damage done by the excavation, experts believe the total number could be over 150.

“The individuals were buried without any recognizable order or orientation,” museum officials wrote in the statement. “Many lay on their stomachs or sides, some adapted to the shape of the pit. The limbs were intertwined with those of other individuals. This indicates a hasty covering of the dead with earth, i.e. not an orderly burial.”

With every individual examined a male, most between the age of 20 and 30 years, and in good health combined with the causes of death due to injuries from blunt and sharp weapons, including spears, daggers, swords, and iron bolts, “the variety of injuries indicates a battle and not an execution site.”

With cremation burial common in the European Roman Empire, finds of Roman skeletons from this period are considered rare, leading to this being one of the most significant Roman war discoveries in Central Europe.

“The creation of a mass grave without cremation of the dead suggests a large number of casualties in combination with a lack of time and resources,” the museum wrote. “The battle wounds, on the other hand, rule out the possibility of executions, such as a punishment for military cowardice. Instead, everything points to the catastrophic end of a military operation.”

Experts dated both the bones and the grave goods to more precisely pinpoint the find to the end of the first century A.D. While most of the dead were robbed of their weapons and equipment, the team still discovered a Roman iron dagger with inlays of silver wire, several scales of armor that show distinct differences from known varieties, the metal cheek piece of a Roman helmet, two iron spearheads (one stuck in a hip bone, mind you), and hobnails from shoes that were made with leather and studded with nails, a type of footwear used by Roman soldiers.

The museum wrote that the dagger was instrumental in the dating because its style was in use from the middle of the first century A.D. to the beginning of the second century A.D.

According to the museum statement, historical sources indicate that Germanic tribes had repeated battles with the Roman Empire near the end of the first century A.D., and some of these skirmishes were extremely costly for the Romans. On the opposing side, the evident victory may have led to the founding of Austria’s capital city.

“The mass grave in Simmering is the first physical evidence of fighting form this period and indicates this location of a battle in the area of present-day Vienna,” the museum wrote. “The defeat attested here could therefore have been the immediate reason for the expansion of the formerly small military base into the legionary camp of Vindobona—less than seven kilometers [4.3 miles] from the site of the find. Hasenleitengasse may therefore mark the beginning of Vienna’s urban history.”

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