How long would the signs of a battle remain?

[tarchon]

Given a mix of bronze/iron armor and weapons, how long would the remains be around it no one buried or looted the corpses for 400 years?The skeletons as well. The battle is in the open air around a fort which sits on a very large hill. The climate of the area is basically Greece. Obviously most of it is gone but I'm trying to get it as realistic as possible. Thanks.

It depends on the size of the battle, but after fairly big ones (say more than several thousand combatants), farmers will still be plowing up the odd artifact centuries later. There probably won't be armor and whole weapons, since those are usually reclaimed or looted, but you do tend to find sling bullets, arrowheads, and broken pieces of this-n-that.
You might find a few mass graves here and there, but (assuming you're talking about your Greek campaign) due to an inviolable taboo in the Hellenic world, corpses were never left unburied. They weren't commonly buried on the battlefield either (an exception was made for those who fell at Marathon, as a signal mark of honor). Sometimes you might turn up the remains of horses (mostly teeth after that much time) though if there was a large cavalry engagement.

Without the looting and if the bodies hadn't been removed, you'd definitely find a lot of stuff within the first century anyway.

I'd say there won't be any immediately visible evidence after 400 years, but a careful search should be able reveal such evidence, say DC 15 or 20. Vary the DC based on whether it was cleaned up and how many people were involved. Maybe like DC 15 for an major, unlooted battlefield, and 25 for a minor, looted battlefield.

 

[Oracular Vision]

That sounds wrong to me. Very wrong. I'm in Boston, there are grave sites within a short stroll of me that are clearly dated back to 1707. By your numbers, those grave markers should be buried. You can go to Civil War battlefields and still find artifacts on the surface, but by your numbers they should be a foot underground.

Good thing we have experts then. See, graveyards have these things called caretakers, and they keep refuse off and keep the graveyard tidy. You also apparently didn't see that he was talking about 400 years, the civil war was only 138 or so years ago, about 1/3 of the period we are talking about. And indeed, in Tennesee, there are no artifacts above ground, but down around a foot or so, where my data above say they should be, there are artifacts, which people find with metal detectors. So, you didn't pay attention to the conditions.

And, if you want to postulate other world conditions, great, but that, again, was not what he asked. And a certain amount of dust will still accumulate, even if you are in a solar system with no asteroids or comets.

See, when someone wants some hard data to make his world more realistic, and someone else helps that person out with just those numbers, backed up by real data, you should resist the temptation to post your mindless blatherings.

I think you should read the referenced works before criticizing someone about things you don't understand. I backed up my numbers with data, you just ran off at the mouth and contributed nothing but noise, like so many here. I only have so many clues to give out, I need to keep some...

But, I can be sure I don't have to read anything like it again...here we go, ignore list. There, that's better!

 

[Tewligan]

But, I can be sure I don't have to read anything like it again...here we go, ignore list. There, that's better!

Touchy...

 

[Femerus the Gnecro]

Wow. That was totally uncalled for.

It's not like he was flaming you or anything... he was just making a comment based on personal experience.

Your dripping sarcasm and insulting tone are more worthy of an 'ignore' in my opinion, than the offhanded remark of some poor guy questioning some data posted onto a messageboard by somebody he doesn't know.

Get a grip.

-femerus

 

[Henry]

It's OV's loss, not Umbran's. An "ignore" list has that unfortunate trait.

I'm sorry, OV, but those figures seemed a little off to me, too. If it is a dry climate, I can definitely see mass accretion (or in the case of deserts, relocation). But in a wetter, mediterranean climate, things don't get buried 2 1/2 feet every 400 years. European farmers don't have to dig that far to find Roman artifacts - otherwise, they'd be almost 15 feet underground after a couple millenia! Hence the erosion factors you mentioned.

 

[Umbran]

*sigh*
Well, OV won't see it, but I'll provide some defense anyway...

1)The mass accretion OV mentioned is from dust and comets. Caretakers do keep off rubbish, but generally don't try to sweep cometary dust off the lawn.

2)By the numbers OV presented, over 138 years, there should be something on the order of 9.6 inches of accumulation over Civil War artifacts (I rounded up and used "a foot", which was an overstatement, but OV used the same measure), and 1.7 feet of gunk over the 1707 graves markers (which are usually less than 2 feet tall). I did, in fact, take the different timescales into account.

3) I cannot speak to Tennesee. My information on Civil War artifacts comes from enthusiasts I know (who search in Virginia and Georgia, I believe). They are big on mentioning how they don't need shovels to find artifacts.

4) Darklance did not specify the cosmological conditions of his world. Taking a moment to note that the cosmology has an effect is reasonable. That dust won't accumulate without a source.

*shrug* Given the above, I think "mindless blatherings" or "running off at the mouth" are inaccurate descriptions. I looked over the linked material, and found OV's statements to be overly simplistic. I looked at the numbers, crunched some myself, and they didn't match the conditions of centuries-old historical places which I have personally seen and heard about. I felt such a mis-match deserved comment and discussion.

 

[thalmin]

O.V., I found your first post to be most informative, and I thank you for it. I think the tone of your second was beneath you. No one here knows your credentials, don't take it so personal if they disagree with you.

 

[CRG]

Depends on where exactly, local environmental conditions.

Grassy? Quick growing grassy? Windy? Dusty? Rain alot?

These and other conditions can bury artifacts long before they decompose.

 

[tarchon]

It occurred to me that there's another artifact often found at battle sites. Roman soldiers seem to have made a practice of burying their valuables before battle, since small caches of coins are frequently associated with ancient Roman battlefields. It was regular enough that their presence or absence is sometimes used as evidence for or against the location of various ancient battles.

I'm not aware of this occuring in early Greek contexts, but it's something to consider along these lines. I guess it's a good thing too that D&D monsters are kind enough not to do that with their little bags of 3d12 gold pieces before we slay them.

 

[Larry Fitz]

on the graveyard caretaker thing, there are plenty of very old (pre 1700) little graveyards in New England, and many of these have no caretaker as such they are overgrown and have been for all of my 26 years here... therefore they should have gained something like 10.4 inches of accumalated 'dust' on them since I moved here?

I think the better answer on this question is, there are ways to back up whatever makes the better story for your needs. If you want the battle to be noticeable, make it so. if you want it to be obscure, make it so, a better question for all of us might be "I want this battle to have left obvious signs that no living person has s tumbled upon in 4 centuries..." Or I want this to look like nothing of import unless the PC's are terribly, terribly observant."