Archaeologists and scientists are discovering new information about the soldiers and conflicts of the past through battlefield archaeology.

Recent digs have uncovered the grave of Richard III from the Wars of the Roses (1455-1487) and mass graves from battles of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).

A newly published article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers fresh archaeological evidence from the battlefield of Himera (Sicily) on mercenaries’ involvement in ancient Greek warfare.

The New York Times reports on the battlefield archaeology in Sicily and the analysis of soldiers’ remains from the site of the battlefield at Himera: “Neither Herodotus nor Diodorus Siculus mentioned mercenaries in their reports of the first Battle of Himera, a fierce struggle in 480 B.C. in which the Greeks from various Sicilian cities united to beat back a Carthaginian invasion. Mercenaries were considered the antithesis of the Homeric hero.”

“‘Being a wage earner had some negative connotations — avarice, corruption, shifting allegiance, the downfall of civilized society,’ said Laurie Reitsema, an anthropologist at the University of Georgia. “In this light, it is unsurprising if ancient authors would choose to embellish the Greeks for Greeks aspect of the battles, rather than admitting they had to pay for it.'”

“But research published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the ancestry of the troops defending Himera was not as strictly Greek as historical accounts of the time would have it.”

The New York Times article is available online.