Roman armour unearthed

The first suit of Roman chain-mail armour ever found in Britain has been unearthed inside a Roman fort in South Shields near Newcastle. Its one of only seven complete examples known from the entire Roman world.

The suit - consisting of an estimated 30,000 iron rings - was discovered by archaeologist inside what is believed to have been a junior officer's room in a barrack block near the eastern wall of the fort. It is an important piece in the jigsaw of archaeological evidence which is shedding new light on a 1,700-year-old mystery. Excavations carried out by Tyne and Wear Museums Service have revealed that all the barrack blocks were burnt down in around 300AD. Up till now archaeologist thought they had been deliberately demolished to make way for newer buildings. Now, however, the pattern of fire damage and the fact that a valuable suit of armour was left inside one of the buildings suggests that the fire was either accidental or more probably the result of enemy action. If further analysis of the evidence confirms that the fort was attacked it would have far-reaching consequences for future understanding of the history of late Roman Britain.

It would strengthen the arguments of those academics who believe that external Barbarian attacks on Roman Britain started in the late third century AD rather than three generations later in the mid fourth.