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.