Chain mail, Castle Douglas

Found in a hoard located at the bottom of the Carlingwark Loch in 1866, this surviving piece of chainmail was found alongside several iron swords (with their tips all deliberately removed) of native and Roman objects deposited sometime between 80 and 200 AD. Offerings to the gods were often special material, treated in special ways or put in special places, such as water. Prestigious weapons such as swords are sometimes found broken, probably sacrificed as part of a ceremony we can only guess about. The swords can be viewed on the National Museum Scotland site here Chain mail was invented by the Celts in the fourth century BC.