Archaeologists excavating an ancient Roman site near the German city of Krefeld, just a few miles west of the Rhine, uncovered a rare Batavian mask, face-fitted for the elite Batavian cavalrymen, which dates to the first century AD, according to Arkeonews.
While digging on the site where an epic battle took place between besieged Roman legions and the attacking forces of Germanic Batavi rebels in 69 AD, the excavators found a corroded piece of metal that they could tell had once been part of a larger crafted metal object.
Four years after this initial discovery, the artifact has been positively identified as having come from a protective Batavian mask, of the type that would have been worn by one of the Batavi cavalrymen (warriors on horseback) who participated in the siege on the Roman camp.
