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Analysis uncovers injury and captivity indicators in a brown bear skull, suggesting its role in spectacles at Viminacium.
Roman amphitheatres were centres of public entertainment, hosting various spectacles that often included wild animals. Excavation of a building near the Viminacium amphitheatre in Serbia in 2016 uncovered the fragmentary cranium of a bear. Multistranded analysis, presented here, reveals that the six-year-old male brown bear ( Ursus arctos ) suffered an impact fracture to the frontal bone, the healing of which was impaired by a secondary infection. Excessive wear to the canine teeth further indicates cage chewing and thus a prolonged period of captivity that makes it likely this bear participated in more than one spectacle at the Viminacium amphitheatre.
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Marković et al. (2025) studied this question.
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