Roman bronze miniature ship’s prow found in Austria

A Roman-era miniature ship’s prow made of bronze has been discovered in Salzburg’s old town in Austria. It was a decoration attached with an iron spike to the door or wall of an urban villa. Bronze objects were usually melted down for later reuse, so it is rare for one of this size to survive. It is the largest bronze artifact from Roman Salzburg found since 1943.

The object was unearthed last year during excavations of the Neue Residenz in the historic site, the site of the new Salzburg branch of the Vienna Belvedere Museum. The remains of a Roman villa dating to the 2nd or 3rd century A.D. were discovered there and the bronze ship’s bow was found beneath rubble of a collapsed wall.

Because the object was deformed and broken, it was initially suspected that it might be an oil lamp shaped like an ancient ship’s prow. The object was exposed under a microscope using a scalpel and ultrasonic fine chisel. The unstable bronze material was then strengthened with specially adapted acrylic resins. The surface was also given a protective coating of microcrystalline wax.

In the museum’s archaeological workshop, “a reshaping and reconstruction of the spectacular object was then carried out based on the plastic copies,” explained Maximilian Bertet, the museum’s archaeological conservator. “It was therefore clear to me that this was not an oil lamp, but a decorative piece.” The object represented the prow of a Roman warship, complete with its ram.

It was discovered that the ship’s prow, cast in bronze, was originally attached to a wall or door with an iron spike. The spike was anchored in the hollow prow with a complex overlay cast. A decorative disc was also fixed between the wall and the prow. “The ship’s prow impresses with its attention to detail, which even clearly shows the railing,” the museum states.

Ship’s prows were symbols of conquest and of political position. The Roman Forum’s platform where political speeches were made, the rostrum, was decorated with the prows of captured ships and even named after them. The author Titus Petronius describes a miniature rostrum decorating the doorposts of the dining room of Trimalchio, the nouveau riche protagonist of his 1st century fiction work Satyricon.

The high quality of the piece, the complexity of casting such a shape, its ornamental mount and the iron reinforcement underscore that the owners of the house had to have been members of the elite. The symbolism underscores how far Roman cultural and political iconography spread through the provinces as the empire grew.

The bronze artifact will go on display after conservation at the new Iuvavum Archaeology Museum in Salzburg starting in 2028. A reconstruction with its original shiny golden patina will be displayed alongside it so visitors can see what it looked like when new.

There is evidence of occupation in and around Salzburg going back to the Neolithic, and several Celtic settlements dotted the area when the Romans invaded in 15 A.D. The Roman city of Iuvavum was founded in just after the invasion where Salzburg’s old town is today. It was granted municipium (the right to independent municipal government) in 45 A.D. and was one of the most important cities in province of Noricum. It was devastated in 170 A.D. during the emperor Marcus Aurelius’ war against the Marcommani and other Germanic peoples. The city never fully recovered from the Marcomannic attack and much of the Romanized population abandoned the city in 448 A.D. when the Gothic king of Italy Odoacer who offered them refuge in Italy.

* This article was originally published here