Gladiatorial games are perhaps one of the most iconic and romanticized features of ancient Roman culture. Historical texts, bas-reliefs, pottery, and mosaics depict warriors fighting to the last breath for freedom and glory, often wrangling exotic beasts in front of crowds of cheering fans. While gladiatorial arenas such as the Roman Colosseum have survived for thousands of years, gladiators themselves have left behind little archaeological evidence, and even less that testifies to their legendary animal combats.
Researchers in Ireland and the United Kingdom have identified the first physical evidence of ancient Roman human-animal gladiatorial combat in Europe: a human skeleton with bite marks on its pelvis likely from a large cat, unearthed in what is believed to be a gladiator burial outside of York, in the UK.
“For years, our understanding of Roman gladiatorial combat and animal spectacles has relied heavily on historical texts and artistic depictions,” Tim Thompson, an anthropologist at Maynooth University, said in a university statement. “This discovery provides the first direct, physical evidence that such events took place in this period, reshaping our perception of Roman entertainment culture in the region.”
Archaeologists had previously unearthed the skeleton at the center of the study, published today in the journal PLOS ONE, in Driffield Terrace—an approximately 1,800-year-old burial ground that scholars speculate may have served as a gladiator graveyard in Roman Britain. Among other evidence, the numerous skeletal remains belonged to well-built young men from around the empire with various healed injuries.
The individual in question was a male between the ages of 26 and 35 with some health issues, and discovered under a layer of horse bones. Led by Thompson, the team of archaeologists and osteologists made a 3D model of punctures in the man’s pelvis. After comparing them to the bite marks of different animals, they concluded that a large cat had been responsible for the lesions, perhaps while scavenging the body after the man’s death.
“The bite marks were likely made by a lion, which confirms that the skeletons buried at the cemetery were gladiators, rather than soldiers or slaves,” Malin Holst, a co-author of the study and an osteoarchaeologist from the University of York, said in a university statement. The bite marks “represent the first osteological confirmation of human interaction with large carnivores in a combat or entertainment setting in the Roman world.”
The man was likely a Bestiarius—typically criminals or prisoners sentenced to fight against animals, without training or defenses, in front of an audience.
“We may never know what brought this man to the arena where we believe he may have been fighting for the entertainment of others,” David Jennings, CEO of York Archaeology, said in a PLOS statement, “but it is remarkable that the first osteo-archaeological evidence for this kind of gladiatorial combat has been found so far from the Colosseum of Rome, which would have been the classical world’s Wembley Stadium of combat.” Jennings did not participate in the study.
Though archaeologists have yet to uncover an amphitheater in the area, the study nevertheless demonstrates that gladiatorial culture reached the Empire’s farthest corners. It also confirms the presence of social, political, and military elite in Roman York; sections of society that would have required such elaborate and cruel entertainment.
