A new 4,000-year-old clay tablet with markings whose symbolism has yet to be deciphered has been unearthed at the prehistoric pile dwelling site of Lucone di Polpenazze in Lombardy, northern Italy. This is the third so-called enigmatic tablet found in the Lucone D sector, the 21st tablet to be discovered at the overall Lucone site.

The tablets, usually made of clay but sometimes of stone, feature incised lines and impressions of geometric shapes including triangles, squares and circles. The oldest of the tablets are predominately characterized by impressed dots.

They have been interpreted as possible calendars, counting tools, or forms of proto-writing. A ritual function has not been ruled out either, extending to the hypothesis that they might have been used as a sort of sacred amulet. One of the most intriguing interpretations today, however, links them to the management of trade, suggesting a function comparable, in some respects, to modern shipping documents used to identify specific goods (perhaps metal).

In addition to northern Italy, enigmatic tablets have been found in Switzerland, Germany and the Danube-Carpathian Basin area in southeastern Central Europe. The largest single concentration of them has been discovered at the Lucone di Polpenazze site.

Located close to Lake Garda, the Lucone di Polpenazze site is now a shallow basin, but in prehistory was a small lake housing at least five distinct pile dwelling settlements occupied from the Neolithic period to the Bronze Age. The Lucone D sector is a small pile-dwelling village from the early Bronze Age. Radiocarbon dating of the oak logs used to build the houses on stilts dates the village to 2034 B.C. The distribution of the houses indicates they were built over the full lake, not when the water was low, attesting to the engineering prowess of the community. Archaeologists also discovered that household waste was ejected off the platforms the houses were perched on creating a layer cake of organic remains

What makes Lucone D exceptional among the other pile dwellings at the site is that the village was struck by a catastrophic fire which destroyed the homes but carbonized and preserved many materials that would normally have decomposed. Wooden sickles, loom weights, linen fragments, seeds and the remains of food in a ceramic bowl have survived in carbonized form. The conflagration even preserved some of the sun-dried clay of the dwellings, firing it as it were in a kiln.

Grave goods from the richest Iron Age burial ever discovered in Scotland have gone on display for the first time in a new exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland.

The skeletal remains of a young warrior were discovered in a stone-lined cist grave opposite the town hall of Alloa in the Central Lowlands of Scotland. The site on Marshill was excavated in 2003 before construction of residential homes. Archaeologists found he was between 17 and 25 years old when he died in the 1st century A.D. The young man was marked as a warrior because of his grave goods: an iron sword with a two-foot-long blade in a leather scabbard placed across his chest, a spear by his side.

He was richly adorned with jewelry, including a glass bead pendant, a bronze fibula, a belt with bronze and iron rings and two bronze toe rings. While his shoes were either not buried or had decomposed over the centuries, the toe rings suggest he wore sandals, another indicator of his elite status.

Iron Age burials are very seldom found in Scotland, and ones with weapons are even more rare. This one was unique not just for the overall richness of its contents, but also because some of the individual pieces had never been found before. The belt with rings, for example, was unprecedented on the Scottish archaeological record.

Dr Matthew Knight, Senior Curator of Prehistory at National Museums Scotland, said:

“The remarkable objects from the Marshill burial give us a vivid insight into the mindset of prehistoric communities living in Scotland almost 2,000 years ago. Burying people with weapons may reflect the person’s role in life as a warrior, or how their community wanted them to be seen in the afterlife. These treasured objects tell us this young man was a powerful member of his community. Following extensive research and conservation, I am thrilled that visitors will have the opportunity to see these objects for the first time in Scotland’s First Warriors.”

The Scotland’s First Warriors exhibition runs through May 16, 2027. It features more than 200 objects related to conflict and violence in Scotland from the Neolithic through the Roman era, including other artifacts that have never been displayed before, such as the Carnoustie Hoard of Bronze Age weapons.

A rare royal seal of the Kushan Empire has been discovered at the Sayyod historical site in southern Tajikistan. Carved with a Bactrian inscription and symbols of royalty, it is approximately 2,000 years old. The small clay seal is of outsized archaeological significance because of the information it contains which will shed new light on the Kushan period in Tajikistan.

The seal is made of fired clay and is in exceptional condition. It is made of two components: a seal handle perforated so it could be worn on a cord and the circular body of the seal. It is two inches high, a sliver wider than that in circumference. The motifs engraved on the seal are mirror images, a feature typical of official seals so that the seal impression would look right. It includes geometric symbols, a bust of a king wearing a crenellated crown, mountain goats, and emblems of royal authority as well as those of local rulers under the Kushan Empire.

The Bactrian inscription may prove especially valuable. Bactrian, an Iranian language written using a modified Greek alphabet, became an important language of administration under Kushan rule, making inscriptions on official objects particularly useful for reconstructing political institutions and personal titles.

If the inscription can be securely read, it may reveal a name, title or institutional connection and help determine whether the seal belonged to a royal official, a local ruler or another figure operating within the Kushan political system.

The combination of royal imagery and symbols apparently associated with local authority is equally intriguing. Rather than simply documenting imperial power, the seal may ultimately provide evidence for the relationship between Kushan rulers and regional elites in what is now southern Tajikistan.

The seal is currently being studied by numismatics and epigraphic experts at the National Museum of Tajikistan to translate the inscription and answer the questions about who it belonged to, what kinds of documents it was used to authenticate and any additional information it may contain about Kushan administration in Central Asia.

A new analysis of the skeletal remains recovered from the unprecedented mass grave discovered under a Vienna soccer field in October 2024 has confirmed they died in a violent mass fatality event, and that they took many projectiles to the groin before they died.

When the mass grave was first unearthed, archaeologists thought it was be related to the near-by medieval and early modern cemetery, perhaps a plague pit or the victims of one of the Ottoman sieges of Vienna. Roman remains had never been found in the Hasenleitengasse area of the city, but as the excavation progressed, the sheer density of remains — at least 128 individuals crammed into a 16.5 by 15-foot pit — made it completely different from any other known mass graves. Radiocarbon dating of the remains and few objects found in the grave date it to the late 1st/early 2nd century A.D.

Analysis of the remains has found that all of the 129 individuals were young adult males between the ages of 18 and 35. At least 48 of them suffered a violent trauma injuries (sharp force, blunt force, projectile penetration), 85% of them inflicted at the time of death (perimortem). They were interred under time pressure, resulting in a disorganized grave with individuals entwined with each other in multiple orientations.

From the injury evidence, researchers determined the deceased were likely soldiers who died in one violent clash. However, there is no other evidence, either in historical literature or on the archaeological record, of a battle having taken place in this area at that time.

Bioarchaeologist Sheridan Strang and the research team of the archaeology firm Novetus discovered that the sharp trauma injuries were distributed all over the bodies, while blunt trauma was mostly on the skulls. The projectile trauma, on the other hand, was concentrated in deceased’s groins.

The most likely scenario for these pelvic injuries is an attacker on the ground using a throwing lance and targeting a gap in an enemy’s armor as he rode horseback.

“We have one individual where the lance head was still inside the pelvis when we excavated him,” Strang told Live Science. “The people who caused these injuries were aiming for these sensitive areas,” she said.

The Hasenleitengasse mass grave is an important site for understanding projectile weapon use, Patrick Randolph-Quinney, a biological anthropologist at Uppsala University in Sweden who was not involved in the research, told Live Science. The fact that projectile trauma was focused on the groin and lower limbs “tells us about a possible lack of armor and protection in those areas — but also that the attackers knew how to incapacitate based on soft-tissue anatomy,” he said.

To find out more about whether the soldiers were Roman or Germanic tribesmen from the local Marcomanni people or somebody else entirely, the team performed DNA analysis of 25 of the skeletons. The results confirmed that the deceased were male and determined a surprising diversity of origins in the small sample. Some came from Italy, other from mainland Europe and three were from the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant.

“These individuals may have been Roman military personnel,” Strang said. “But they might not all be Romans. There’s a chance that it is a commingled grave, with Romans and another Germanic tribe.”

Research on the skeletal remains is ongoing. Next on the agenda is stable isotope analysis to narrow down where they came from, plus investigating their overall health, what they ate and whether they suffered from any diseases.

Archaeological investigations along the route of new railway construction have uncovered Roman artifacts, including a rare silver denarius minted by the self-styled Emperor Carausius (ca. 250-293 A.D.) The coin dates to 287 A.D. and bears the laureate, draped bust of Carausius facing right encircled by the inscription IMP CARAVSIVS P F AVG (“Emperor Carausius, Pious and Blessed Augustus”).

Carausius was not an Emperor of Rome. He was a Roman citizen of the Manapii people in Belgium and an officer in the Roman navy. He was the commander of the Roman fleet Classis Britannica based in the English Channel when he got in trouble for taking confiscated treasure from captured pirates and concealing its existence from Rome. Emperor Maximian condemned him to death, but before he could be executed, Carausius revolted against Rome and declared himself Emperor of Britain and northern Gaul. He ruled the Britannic Empire as an independent state from 286 to 293 A.D. His coins were the first Roman coins struck in London.

In 293, the western Caesar Constantius Chlorus retook some of the territories in Gaul. Carausius’ treasurer Allectus assassinated him and appointed himself emperor, but when Constantius launched a full invasion to reclaim Britain in 296 A.D., Allectus died in the battle and the Britannic Empire was no more.

The East West Rail (EWR) service will run between Oxford and Cambridge, but before construction begins, archaeologists will excavate 6,000 trial trenches 164 feet long, before any permit will be granted. What they find in the test trenches will determine the Environmental Impact Assessment and the ultimate design of the railway. The program is expected to take two years.