each measuring between 24 and 26 inches in the style of Roman “spatha” swords. The fourth sword was shorter, with a blade of just 18 inches, which experts classified as a ring-pommel sword.

The swords (each in a differently decorated scabbard) were buried in a pit within in a late Iron Age or Roman-British boundary ditch). Some of the swords may have been 150 years old at the time of ...