Archaeologists in Bulgaria have discovered a human skeleton inside a giant Roman jar. It's likely that the individual sought shelter in the vessel during an enemy attack over 1,600 years ago but died as a fire swept through the area.
The team unearthed the gigantic jar in a Late Roman turret, or small tower, in the Roman colony of Deultum on Aug. 10. It's unclear which battle led to the individual's death, but Deultum faced many attacks from East Germanic tribes and Huns in the fourth and fifth centuries, lead excavator Lyudmil Vagalinski, an archaeologist at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, told Live Science in an email.
The individual's remains were found with two iron knives and a belt inside the container, a type of jar known as a dolium. These huge vessels were the largest type of pottery in antiquity (from roughly the eighth century B.C. to the fifth century A.D.) and were used to store goods such as olive oil and wine. The largest dolia could hold more than 260 gallons (1,000 liters), although the surviving lower part of the newfound dolium was smaller, measuring approximately 3 feet (1 meter) in diameter, Vagalinski said.
Even though Vagalinski and his colleagues had been excavating the turret, which is the northern turret of Deultum's western Roman gate, they weren't expecting to find human remains there, according to Standart News, the Bulgarian outlet that first covered the finding.
"We were surprised," Vagalinski said in an email. It's very rare for archaeologists to discover human remains inside the cities of antiquity except in the case of "extraordinary circumstances" — like earthquakes, enemy attacks or volcanic eruptions, he said. Even in these cases, survivors would search for their dead to bury them beyond the city walls, but they often didn't know that there were dead bodies under the ruins.
The recent discovery seems to represent one of those "extraordinary circumstances," Vagalinski said. The team found a significant amount of burned materials around the dolium, including ashes and coals; broken bricks, tiles and shards; blackened walls; melted glass fragments; and bones from domestic animals. The likely scenario is that, upon hearing of an imminent attack, people brought their livestock into the fortress. The archaeologists also found many bronze coins that were probably lost in the chaos.
The individual, presumably a young man, was likely part of this tumult and climbed into the dolium to hide or seek shelter, Vagalinski said. And while it's unknown how the fire started, the presence of ashes under the skeleton in the dolium indicates that the individual went inside after the fire had already begun, Vagalinski said.
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The individual climbed inside the giant vessel with two knives around 1,600 years ago.
(Image credit: Archaeologia Bulgarica)
The team's preliminary analysis dates the event to approximately A.D. 400, though they'll have a more precise date after they process the rest of their field data, according to Vagalinski.
The young man was likely hiding from the raging fire in the empty dolium and held an iron knife between his legs to defend himself in case the attackers found him, Vagalinski explained. He had a second knife in his belt.
"In any case, he made no attempt to get out of the ceramic vessel," Vagalinski said. The team determined this based on the individual’s position, similar to that of a sleeping man. "After the attack, the inhabitants of the city leveled the ruins of the tower and covered them with a new, higher floor." They did not know that a fellow citizen was lying at the bottom of the dolium.
The skeletal remains have been moved to Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, where they will be analyzed by a physical anthropologist, according to Vagalinski. Next summer, the team will head back to Deultum to try to unearth the entire western Late Roman gate, which dates to approximately A.D. 300. The researchers are "eager to reveal its whole plan and proper chronology," Vagalinski said. They also aim to complete the investigation of the gate's northern turret, where they found the dolium.
Earlier this year, the team discovered an older latrina, the Latin word for toilet, dating to between the second and third centuries, near the gate.
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Margherita is a trilingual freelance writer specializing in science and history writing with a particular interest in archaeology, palaeontology, astronomy and human behavior. She earned her BA from Boston College in English literature, ancient history and French, and her journalism MA from L'École Du Journalisme de Nice in International New Media Journalism. In addition to Live Science, her bylines include Smithsonian Magazine, Discovery Magazine, BBC Travel, Atlas Obscura and more.
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