'The lance head was still inside the pelvis': Mass grave found in Austria may hold casualties of unknown ancient Roman battle

BERLIN — A Roman-era mass grave discovered underneath a soccer field near Vienna holds the skeletons of young men from all over the Roman Empire .

And many of them suffered injuries to the groin before they died, archaeologists have found.

The grave, which held at least 129 people buried in an "extremely disorganized" manner, was excavated in 2024 and has been dated to the first to second centuries A.D.

A new analysis is confirming what archaeologists initially suspected : These are likely the remains of Roman-era war dead.

"This is a spectacular find," Sheridan Strang , a bioarchaeologist with the archaeology firm Novetus, told Live Science.

Strang presented new work on the skeletons on Aug.

6 at the 25th European Paleopathology Association meeting .

The work is not yet peer reviewed.

The mass grave was discovered in Hasenleitengasse, a neighborhood in the outskirts of Vienna, which in Roman times was known as Vindobona .

Archaeologists estimated that all 129 skeletons were males between the ages of 18 and 35.

They did not find any typical grave goods in the burial but did discover a few weapons.

At least two-thirds of the people buried in the mass grave had evidence of violent trauma inflicted around the time of death.

Several of the deceased in the mass grave had injuries to their groin area. (Left: lumbar vertebra; right: sacrum.) (Image credit: S.

Strang, Novetus GmbH) "We determined that these individuals were most likely soldiers, and they died from some kind of mass violence event, either a battle or a military campaign," Strang said in a research presentation attended by Live Science.