Bronze leg found in Scottish bog sheds new light on Roman occupation

Once thought to have been looted by Scottish tribes, the gilded limb is the centrepiece of a new exhibition on Roman Scotland in Edinburgh

A large bronze leg found in a bog in rural Scotland more than 200 years ago and then hidden away in a duke’s storeroom is helping to rewrite the history of the Roman empire.

Antiquarians argued that the so-called Mislington leg had been looted, perhaps from York, hacked off by marauding Scottish tribes and carried north over Hadrian’s Wall. “We cannot visualise the conditions which would have led to its erection anywhere north of the Great Wall,” said one scholar, James Curle, in 1932.

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