A groundbreaking archeological find in Bosnia - specialists spent only two days in the shallows of the Sava River lifting dozens of Iron Age ingots from the mud, forming together the largest hoard of iron ingots ever recovered. Each bar was placed “in containers with distilled water to preserve each piece as well as possible,” according to HuffPost Spain. After waiting for water levels to fall, divers marked, measured, photographed, and ferried every object ashore for immediate conservation.
The scale of the find surprised researchers. Only one comparable bar exists in Croatia and “barely two or three” in Slovenia, whereas the Bosnian riverbed yielded dozens, “an unprecedented event for the continent.”
Local historian Pero Matkic first noticed odd iron fragments on the riverbank early in 2024, photographed them, and notified the Tolisa Franciscan Monastery Museum. “His tip was the driving force behind the discovery,” said museum staff. An emergency survey followed under underwater archaeologist Krunoslav Zubcic of the Croatian Institute for Conservation in Zagreb.
The museum team and professional divers located bipyramidal metal bars just beneath the silt. They used photogrammetry to create a 3D model, set fixed reference points, and plot every ingot before removal, ensuring none were missed downstream.
Each bar is double-pyramidal, cast as near-pure iron in the 1st or 2nd century BCE, a period bridging the La Tène culture and rising Roman influence. Two millennia in low-oxygen mud left the metal in good condition.
Scholars propose that Bosanska Posavina may have served as a late Iron Age trading hub connecting Central Europe, the Mediterranean, and North Africa. Chemists will next isolate trace elements to match the iron to ore signatures, hoping to identify the mine, reconstruct trade routes, and determine whether the deposit represents a single lost shipment or repeated activity at an unknown river landing.
Conservators kept every ingot submerged in distilled water and will stabilize them in Tolisa Museum laboratories with metallurgical input from Sarajevo and Zagreb. A selection will go on display, while other bars will remain available for comparative study alongside La Tène-era artifacts across Europe.
“These bars are of great importance not only for Bosnia but for the entire region,” said regional heritage officials.
Written with the help of a news-analysis system.