Archaeologists find 2,300-year-old swords adorned with gems and ancient symbols

Archaeologists in central France have uncovered two swords, buried for roughly 2,300 years, that still glint with inlaid glass and copper. The finds sit among more than one hundred grave pits on a hill overlooking the small town of Creuzier‑le‑Neuf.

The site’s burial ground dates to the early fourth century B.C. and covers nearly 7,000 square feet, a scale rarely matched for La Tène‑period France.

Benjamin Oury of the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), who led the excavation, says every object pulled from the soil helps reconstruct Celtic life at a political crossroads.

Celtic swords and burial sites

Soil acidity has stripped the skeletons away, yet iron‑oxide cocoons preserved many metal offerings in place.

Almost half of the graves still contained jewelry, weaponry, or costume fittings that slid free once conservators separated the rust from the soil matrix.

The enclosure itself is quadrangular, edged by a ditch wide enough to signal communal effort rather than family memory.

Orientation north to south keeps the rows tidy, hinting at coordinated funeral rites rather than hurried internment.

Only one tomb held a cremation, and it came with a painted clay vase whose red spirals echo Mediterranean pottery fashions.

Work at other Second Iron Age cemeteries shows such decorated urns riding trade routes that reached the Rhône Valley and beyond.

Metalwork that defies time

Eighteen fibulas, some iron and others copper‑alloy, surfaced in fragile bundles but stabilized cleanly in Vienna’s CREAM laboratory.

One brooch carries a silver‑leafed gem while another shows ocelli, or eye‑shaped bosses that Celtic artisans favored during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C..

Bracelets came up in pairs for several burials, their terminals socketed so neatly that the clasp disappears when closed.

A matched set bears concentric rings so deeply punched that fresh hammer marks still catch light under magnification.

Copper spheres sit atop some clasps like berries on a stem, a motif echoed on harness fittings found in Champagne burials two hundred miles away.

Shared decorative grammar points to workshops trading not only goods but patterns across tribal frontiers.

Two Celtic swords, two stories

“The longer sword has all the characteristics of a functional weapon,” said Vincent Georges, archaeologist at INRAP. One Celtic sword stretches long enough to ride at a horseman’s waist, its sheath edged by cabochons of glass paste. 

Textile fragments clung to the back plate of the scabbard, probably the deceased’s cloak, and X‑ray stripes show the belt rings had never been pried away.

Even oxidation respected the original geometry, letting conservators measure the blade within two millimeters of its working length.

The second weapon is shorter, leaf‑shaped, and clearly ceremonial, its copper hilt tipped with small bronze balls called antennae.

Georges added that the piece is “more or less contemporary with the Celtic incursions in northern Italy and the sacking of Rome in 387 B.C.”

Tracing the swastika’s earlier meaning

Two gems on the ceremonial sheath carry neat engravings of the swastika, a cross with right‑angled arms that ancient cultures read as luck or cosmic motion.

Historian Lorraine Boissoneault documents the emblem on artifacts from India to the Mississippi Valley long before its Nazi appropriation.

Classical collections show the motif spreading across the Mediterranean by the sixth century B.C., then drifting north with Celtic migration.

Its presence here, tucked beside a crescent and full circle inlaid on the blade itself, suggests celestial or solar connotations rather than any martial boast.

The Creuzier‑le‑Neuf sword adds the earliest Western European example carved into gemstone, a technique more at home in Hellenistic seal rings. Such hybrid artistry underscores how porous cultural borders were, even during localized feuds.

On the frontier of Celtic power

Creuzier‑le‑Neuf lay where the Arverni, Aedui, and Bituriges territories overlapped, a liminal patch that prospered on exchange and occasional tension.

Trade beads from Mediterranean workshops enter local rivers just as Arverni bronze flows south into alpine passes.

History remembers the wider Celtic world for routing Roman troops at the Battle of Allia on July 18, 387 B.C., a clash that left Rome paying gold for its freedom.

The ornamental Celtic sword’s dating to that generation hints that prestige weapons doubled as status badges while real steel rode to war.

All three tribes maintained fortified oppida within a day’s march, yet they buried their dead together here, suggesting overlapping kin networks or shared sacred ground.

Isotope work planned for the sheath alloys may reveal whether ores came from Massif Central mines or more distant sources tied to intertribal alliances.

Yet no slash notches scar the blade edges, confirming Georges’ view that the shorter sword lived mainly as insignia of rank. Function bowed to symbolism, and symbolism borrowed from everywhere.

What the artifacts tell us

Without bones to speak for them, the objects narrate diet, trade, and hierarchy. Cabochons likely held imported glass, bracelets mimic La Tène type‑A catalogs, and the swords compress the story of shifting alliances into metal and stone.

Oury calls the site “a classroom for understanding how identity was displayed in death,” and future residue studies on corrosion layers may pinpoint burial textiles or pigments.

Conservation continues, but plans for a regional museum display are already under discussion.

Each cleaned item reminds visitors that symbols travel farther than armies. A sign once bent toward thunder gods now rests on a sword that never drew blood, carried by someone who wanted to be remembered, and was.

Photo: Flore Giraud, Inrap.

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