A Celtic helmet travelled improbably far: a 2,400-year-old bronze treasure surfaces in Poland

Around 2,400 years ago, someone at the fortified settlement of Łysa Góra in north-eastern Poland crushed a fine bronze helmet and placed it in a pit with iron tools. Archaeologists have now identified it, in a study published in the journal Antiquity, as a Berru-type helmet — the only known example of its kind found outside the Celtic homelands of the 4th century BC. Bartłomiej Kaczyński of the State Archaeological Museum in Warsaw describes Łysa Góra as one of the most exciting and mysterious Iron Age sites in the region. How the helmet made its long journey — trade, gift, or a traveller who never went home — is a mystery the find now lets historians chase.