Gravel extraction along the Danube at Deinham, Austria, turned up at least 500 iron bars pointed at both ends. Together they weigh more than a metric ton, making this the largest prehistoric find of its kind in Europe.
The finders did not sell the metal for scrap. They reported it to the authorities, and the collection was later donated to a regional Austrian museum.
"It is nothing short of a minor miracle that the largest mass find of prehistoric iron bars in Europe did not end up at scrap dealers," says Peter Trebsche of the University of Innsbruck, who led the study.
Dating the iron
Radiocarbon dating places the bars in the La Tène period, in the third and second centuries B.C. The iron probably came from production centers in what is now Bavaria, near fortified settlements known as oppida.
According to the authors, the cargo was heading down the Danube to market and was lost, most likely in a shipwreck.
Worth a fortune
A ton of iron was enough to forge about 500 swords weighing 1.5 to two kilograms each. The authors compare its value to gold hoards of the same era. One of those, from the Manching oppidum, held 443 coins with 3.7 kilograms of gold.
"It is incredible that such a large quantity of iron was transported at once and was available in a single exchange transaction in the Late Iron Age," Trebsche says.
Marion Berranger of the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard in France co-authored the paper, published in Antiquity. The find shows how developed river transport in central Europe already was at the time.
