In 1820, a larger-than-life bronze boot was pulled from a Scottish bog. For centuries, experts assumed it was looted from a Roman settlement, perhaps as an odd spoil of war. But a new analysis challenges that theory, suggesting that Rome’s own soldiers deliberately dismantled the statue.

In a recent statement , National Museums Scotland announced that its team had reconstructed the full statue that once included the boot known as the Milsington Leg . During a closer analysis of the boot and other statue fragments from the Roman frontier, the researchers realized the leg appeared to have been carefully removed, not “brutally hacked off,” the museum explained.…