Metal Detectorists Stumble Upon a Rare 2,000-Year-Old Roman Sword in Poland
Researchers think the weapon, which had been deliberately broken and burned, was once part of a funerary ritual for a local warrior
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Rafał Proszowski and Mariusz Lampa were searching for World War II-era artifacts in the snowy woods of the Polish Jura when their metal detectors revealed an unexpected—and much rarer—item.
Instead of shell casings or coins, the two metal detectorists and history enthusiasts unearthed a three-foot-long Roman-era sword that dates back nearly 2,000 years.
“We’d never found anything like this before,” Proszowski, a member of the Inventum Association historical society, tells Gazeta Wyborcza’s Beata Strak, per a translation by Notes From Poland’s Alicja Ptak.
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“No one can quite say how or why this sword ended up there; only research on it will perhaps yield some detailed knowledge,” Proszowski adds. After making the find, he and Lampa turned it over to archaeological authorities at the nearby Czestochowa Museum, where experts are conducting additional testing.
Magdalena Wieczorek-Szmal, an archaeologist at the museum, calls the sword “one of the most significant discoveries of Roman-era weaponry in this region,” according to TVP World’s Michal Zdanowski.
Initial research shows that the weapon dates to the third or fourth century C.E. and is likely a spatha, a type of broadsword used by the Roman cavalry. However, experts think this particular sword is linked to the Vandals, a Germanic group associated with the Przeworsk culture in central and southern Poland.
“The sword was owned by an influential person from the Vandal tribes,” Mariusz Włudarz, president of the Inventum Association, says to Live Science’s Kristina Killgrove.
The sword was deliberately broken into three pieces, and its blade bears traces of fire patina. As such, researchers think it may have been burned as part of a funeral pyre. Live Science notes that purposefully damaged weapons—such as “bent or broken swords, notched blades and flattened shields”—are a notable feature of Przeworsk burials, which often included the ritual sacrifice of a warrior’s weapon.
Particularly in areas with Roman influence, high-status Przeworsk burials were “often accompanied [by] Roman imports,” as Heritage Daily’s Mark Milligan writes. This cross-cultural funerary practice could account for the presence of the weapon in a Przeworsk burial.
As the Inventum Association writes in a Facebook post, “It’s possible that in this forest near Czestochowa, [Vandal] warriors performed a farewell ritual, burning the body of a fallen comrade and leaving behind symbolic objects,” per a translation from TVP World.
Proszowski and Lampa also discovered a medieval ax and three spurs from the late Middle Ages nearby.
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After conservation and analysis at the Czestochowa Museum concludes, the sword and other artifacts will go on display at the nearby Mokra Museum, per Live Science.
“This find reinforces the historical significance of northern Jura,” Maciej Kosiński, an archaeologist at the Czestochowa Museum, tells TVP World. “It shows that this land was not just a passageway but a place of real activity during ancient times.”
