[Archaeology Magazine] Chainmail, Hedensted, DenmarkPhoto: Vejle Museums
Posted on 01/23/2025 5:28:26 PM PST by SunkenCiv
A team of archaeologists uncovered a trove of weapons, armor, and other goods in Denmark, in advance of a motorway being built on the site.
The deposit is a weapon sacrifice—literally, the weapons were the things sacrificed. Over 1,500 years ago, an Iron Age community deposited over 100 lances, spears, swords, knives, arrowheads, and more across two houses on the site. Taken together, the deposit is a compelling look into the social and military wheelings and dealings of the group that inhabited the region.
Based on the way the items were deposited, the archaeological team concluded that the site was not a weapons workshop or a barracks—settings where piles of weapons would not be out of place...
The exact count of the metal objects found at the site is as follows: 119 lances and spears, eight swords, five knives, three arrowheads, one axe, one set of chainmail armor, fragments of at least two oath rings and a bugle, a bridle, and some yet-to-be identified objects.
The rings were bracteates: bronze medallions which would be worn around the neck and often expressed the wearers' political or military allegiance. The bracteates were etched with a design reminiscent of the chainmail found at the site. According to the release, the chainmail is the first discovered on a settlement in southern Scandinavia, rather than in a burial or other deposit.
The team also recovered ceramics and flint objects; by their reckoning, the site was occupied for millennia. By the early 400s, the settlement held significant social and economic influence in the area, according to the museums release, allowing it to send out military campaigns to the surrounding area.
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
[Archaeology Magazine] Chainmail, Hedensted, DenmarkPhoto: Vejle Museums
Sweet, you found my arms and armerments. Let me know when you can send them. I’ll provide the money for packaging and shipping.
Early preppers.
Weapons don’t get sacrificed, they get used or hidden.
No Mithril?
Nope, but close by this site they’ve now found the graves of a Dark Ages musical group, the Truesilver Messenger Service. In one of the sagas it’s said that while playing for some legendary king, they didn’t satisfy his majesty, so he killed them with an axe and had their roadies bury them on the spot. The moral of the story is, never do a gig by a big pile of Iron Age weapons.
The earliest known weapons “buyback”?
They may have been getting ready for some **** to go down, but more likely they were a trading entrepot. During the Roman Empire, there was a big uptick in iron ore processing and iron metallurgy around the Baltic.
Also, it's little known, but during the Crisis of the 3rd Century, the Romans were still gettin' it done, and went scorched-Earth on Jutland, and apparently put a garrison at the strait, to control traffic and trade.
Maybe it was an assault on preppers... /rimshot
Weapons of Mass DeFunction......
Looks like their cache ain’t nothin’ but trache.
XLNT!..................
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