2,000-year-old skull found at Celtic fort was likely a ‘war trophy’ displayed by conquering Romans

abdulmanannet77@gmail.comNovember 20, 2025

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2,000-year-old skull found at Celtic fort was likely a ‘war trophy’ displayed by conquering Romans

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Archaeologists have found a single human skull within the walls of a 2,000-year-old fort in Spain. Their study of the skull reveals that a local soldier was brutally killed by Roman forces, who then decapitated him and placed his head against the walls of a fort as a warning to others.

In the first century BC, Rome repeatedly waged war against the Cantabrians, fierce Celtic warriors who lived in what is now northern Spain, to take control of the Iberian Peninsula. The Cantabrian Wars (29 to 19 BC) were fought in part by the first Roman emperor. Octavian (later known as Augustus) se. During these wars, the Romans defeated the Cantabrians in the siege of La Loma (“The Hill”), a fortified Celtic city in what is now the province of Palencia, in 25 BC.

Just outside the fort walls, archaeologists recovered hundreds of projectiles, revealing that in its final hours La Loma was riddled with storms of Roman arrows. Fragments of armor and weapons scattered on the ground appeared to have been damaged during hand-to-hand combat between the Cantabrians and the Romans, the researchers wrote. After their success, Roman troops tore down the walls, destroying the fort.

The human skull was broken and scattered in a corner of the fort, but it clearly belonged to the layer of debris associated with the collapse of the defensive walls, the researchers noted in the study.

DNA Analysis of the skull showed that it came from a man likely local to the area, and researchers estimated that he died around the age of 45. They found no evidence of a grave or the remains of the skeleton.

Given the flaking of the skull bones, their light color, the fragmentary condition of the skull, and the absence of other bones, researchers suspect that the skull was exposed to the elements rather than buried.

three views of a reconstructed broken human skull and a view of a tooth and part of a jaw

A reconstruction of the skull found at La Loma in Spain. (Image credit: Silvia Carnicero)

“The skull was broken during the demolition of the walls”, Santiago Domínguez-Soleradirector of Heroica Archeology and Cultural Heritage and lead author of the study, told Live Science in an email. “That means the head was exposed for a few months.”

Researchers suspect that this man died defending the fort and that the Romans deliberately placed his decapitated head atop the wall during their occupation of the site.

“Then the head fell near the wall and was buried in the rubble created when the Romans destroyed the fortifications and abandoned their position there,” the researchers wrote.

Roman legions often displayed whole corpses and parts of their defeated enemies, including the heads and hands, the study found. “These punitive acts could be part of intimidation strategies,” write the researchers, with this decapitated head serving as a “war trophy.”

But the exact circumstances of the exposure are unclear.

“We don’t know how the head was exposed,” Domínguez-Solera said. “There are no diagnostic marks on the surface of the bone” that would suggest whether it was, for example, impaled on a pike.

Further work is planned at La Loma to better understand the vicious siege.

“This year we found other skull fragments, human, in other parts of the world. [fort’s] entry,” Domínguez-Solera said. “We will study them for more evidence of the punishments.”