Original scientific paper
Remains of two Middle La Tène Warrior graves from the Auersperg Palace in Ljubljana
Metka Štrajhar
; Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Andrej Gaspari
; Ministry of Culture, Directorate for Cultural Heritage, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Abstract
This contribution presents the preliminary findings on the remains of the La Tène warrior graves discovered in the Early Roman in-fill deposit during the investigation of the Auersperg Palace building area in Ljubljana in 2002. Especially noteworthy is a conglomerate of iron objects, in which there are a four times folded sword of a Middle La Tène scheme, a band-shaped shield boss, a shaft-hole axe and perhaps also a ring, which had been a part of a belt set. Adherent to the conglomerate are fragments of burnt human bones and several fragments of one or two reconstructed vessels, which were found in the same deposit in larger numbers. The presence of two hand-built pots with the characteristics of the local La Tène pottery, as well as the shaft-hole axe, typical of the Late Hallstatt warrior’s equipment, foreign to the Celtic armament, indicates that this is the grave of a native, roughly from the transition between the LT C1 and LT C2 phases or slightly later. Discovered in the same deposit, there was a once folded scabbard with its mouth decorated with unique composite motif of a dragon pair and a snake, combined with vegetative ornamentation. The scabbard is a typical piece of the LT C1b phase weaponry and belongs to another burial, supposedly slightly older than the first one.
Keywords
Ljubljana; Auersperg Palace; archaeology; Late Iron Age; weapons; Celts; dragon-pair ornament
Hrčak ID:
111992
URI
Publication date:
12.12.2013.
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