“Unearthing Secrets of the Past: What Lies Beneath Austria’s Soccer Field Could Rewrite Roman History”
The Roman Skeletons Under The Soccer Field
Reiner Riedler/Vienna MuseumAn archaeologist working to excavate the skeletons found under a soccer field in Vienna.
According to the Vienna Museum Magazine, the mass grave was discovered in October 2024 during renovations of a soccer field in Vienna’s Simmering neighborhood. Though archaeologists suspected that the bodies could be from a “plague pit” or the Second Ottoman Siege of Vienna in 1683, they found, to their surprise, that the remains were Roman and thus much older.
First, they were able to determine the age of the bones through carbon dating, which suggested that the soldiers had died between 80 and 230 C.E. Further study of items at the site — like a dagger and its sheath — narrowed the timeframe down to roughly the late first century.
Items like these also helped identify the soldiers as Roman. The dagger had a Roman design, as did a helmet found during the excavation. What’s more, archaeologists also found an array of nails from caligae, Roman military shoes.
Thus, the men were Romans who had been in Vienna around the first century C.E. And it appeared that they each died in a gruesome way.
L. Hilzensauer/Vienna MuseumA collection of shoe nails from caligae, Roman military shoes.
At least 129 intact skeletons were identified at the site, though additional bones that were scattered during construction suggest that as many as 150 individuals were once buried there. All of the remains belonged to men in good physical condition between the ages of 20 and 30 years old — and each of them bore a fatal injury. The men had seemingly been killed by “blunt and sharp weapons such as spears, daggers, swords, and iron belts fired from a distance,” according to the Vienna Museum Magazine.
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