The skeleton of a thousand-year-old Lombard warrior skeleton was found buried with his horse in Testona, Italy.

“This is a very rare find,” said Gabriella Pantò, the archaeologist leading the dig. “We have not seen many precedents in Italy. We have seen horses’ heads buried with warriors, but this find shows the area is vitally important,” she added. […]

The warrior was also buried with a treasure chest being x-rayed by archaeologists. In addition, a small bag held a pair of pincers, a bronze belt buckle and some armour.

He wore a ring on his left index finger and also had both a knife and a “scramasax”, a short sword designed for close combat.

I’m confused about the dating. The Lombards had been defeated by the Franks in the 8th century in the Turin area. A thousand years ago when the above fellow and his poor horse were buried, the Lombards were centuries away from their warrior heydey.

How do they know he wasn’t a Frank? The sequential conqueror/conquered cultures seem to have borrowed from each other liberally. The first Holy Roman Emperor Otto I used the famous Iron Crown of Lombardy when he was ever-so-fatefully crowned by the pope in 951 A.D., and that was 200 years after Pepin first spanked the Lombards in northern Italy.

Maybe his accessories mark him as a Lombard. The belt buckle, perhaps. Because lots of Germanic and Frankish peoples rocked the scramasax. He he… Scramasax.