Metal detectorists searching for World War II artifacts in a forest in Poland stumbled upon something far older: a nearly 2,000-year-old sword purposefully broken into three pieces. The weapon may have been a funeral offering for a fallen member of the Vandals, a Germanic tribe renowned for sacking Rome in the fifth century.
In January, two detectorists with the Inventum Association history club discovered the sword in the Jura, a hilly and forested region of southern Poland. A preliminary analysis by experts at the nearby Częstochowa Museum suggests the weapon was a double-edged spatha, a broadsword most commonly used by Germanic horse-mounted warriors during the time of the Roman Empire. From the third century B.C. to the fifth century A.D., Poland was inhabited by people of the Przeworsk culture, which included the Vandals.
