Corbridge A Breastplates - to cross or not cross diagonally?

[scythius]

Besides if the Romans were essentially throwing away junk so it couldn't have been used by the enemy, it wouldn't have been packed in a box all neatly together, it would have been partially destroyed, smashed, etc. Then scattered and buried in a trash pit. You are really grasping at straws here. Do you know of any other cases were Roman trash is packaged in a stout wooden crate? "

My question to you is this - how exactly do you suggest that the Romans reduce these bits of metal to a form that the locals could not re-use? Any way that would render the metal unusable would be disastrously expensive in terms of time and resources - much simpler to bury it and hope it's not found.

The value of the metal scraps isn't necessarily in what use the Roman metalworkers intended, but what the locals could re-process these raw materials into.

It's been a while since I've leafed through the Hoard report at the local Uni, but I recall that there was a bunch of stuff that would qualify as 'scrap' by nearly anyone's definition )bent nails, broken projectile points...)