Currently on display at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn, Germany, archaeologists in the United Kingdom have unearthed a Roman-era mercenary buried with his sword and a mysterious beheaded skull.

The Vale of Glamorgan council in Wales hired public archaeologist Mark Collard to assess a road they wanted to be straightened.

It led to the discovery of an extensive trove of archaeological artifacts and hundreds of graves dating back thousands of years.

Roman skulls in one section of the five-mile road was a collection of Roman artifacts and several skeletons, Mark Collard, the managing director of Rúbicon Heritage who is leading the project, told Insider.

One is believed to be a mercenary, buried with his head by his feet.

In 2019, in a Roman graveyard in Suffolk, England, archaeologists found the same corpses of 17 decapitated skeletons who had been removed after death, it’s believed.

The head by his feet laid by his sword was by his feet. Archaeologists found a similar case a month earlier.

It remains a mystery what the purpose of this mound, buried with a large sword and a military brooch, added to the belief that the “Roman Empire fell apart in Britain,” Collard said.

Another is believed to be a mercenary, buried with his head by his feet.

In the middle of a field lies an open-hidden medieval burial ground, uncovered by Collard and his team, that holds 450 bodies.

People returned to the burial ground for roughly 500 years — from the sixth to the thirteenth century — to bury their loved ones there. “It’s unusual that they’re buried effectively in the middle of a field. It’s not near a church. And that’s one of the things we’re puzzling about why people would go back for so long to bury people at the top of this mound,” said Collard.

The team is undertaking a detailed analysis of the remains, checking for family links to the bodies, signs of diseases or injuries, or clues about diets.

The detailed findings will be published at the end of 2022.

“Archaeologists always say, we didn’t expect to find this much, and in this case, we really didn’t, because the preceding surveys didn’t raise many hopes. But it has proved to be an incredibly important, Roman, and later, landscape with lots of activity from 4000 BC to the Second World War,” Collard said.