It is lavishly decorated with incised, punched and embossed figures, indicating that it was probably used for displays or cavalry tournaments, though it may well have been intended to be worn in battle as well.

The brow band has three diadem-like peaks bordered by writhing snakes whose heads meet at the centre, forming an arch above the central figure of Mars.

It was buried in a compressed and folded state in complete isolation from any other objects of the same period and at some remove from any known Roman sites; how and why it came to be deposited remains unknown.

However, the Dutch historian Johan Nicolay has identified a "lifecycle" for Roman military equipment in which ex-soldiers took items home with them as a reminder of their service and occasionally disposed of them away from garrison sites, for instance by votive deposition or burial with the dead.

[9] John Christopher Atkinson described the circumstances of its discovery in an article for The Gentleman's Magazine in September 1864: A short time since it was found expedient to supersede the existing accommodation-road to Barnaby Grange Farm, which crosses the Cleveland Railway on the level, by a new one carried beneath the line.

While prosecuting the necessary excavation, and after reaching a depth of a few feet, a variety of [animal] bones, most of them in exceedingly good preservation, and with an abundance of earthy phosphate of iron investing them, were dug upon.

[10]He commented that the find appeared to have been "deliberately buried in a hole dug for the purpose, just where it was found; and the unbattered, and even unscratched condition of its entire visible surface seems amply to confirm the inference.

Atkinson described the outer decoration: The chief ornamentation seems to depend on the effigies of two snakes in strong relief and wrought hollow, with their heads meeting ...