Italian archaeologists have discovered the remains of 38 skeletons buried in a Jewish cemetery in Rome more than 500 years ago, offering further evidence of their ubiquity and persecution under papal rule.
The well-preserved skeletons were found during excavations beneath a building in an area identified on ancient maps as “Campus Iudeorum” – Latin for “Field of Jews” — in the Trastevere quarter of Rome just across the Tiber River from the Italian capital.
The bodies were believed to have been buried there between the mid-14th and mid-17th centuries, and the discovery is giving archaeologists new insights into how the community lived and died in the medieval era.
“I am very happy we have found important information about this cemetery, perhaps for the first time ever,” the archaeologist in charge of the project, Daniela Rossi, told RNS. “It is testimony to the important presence of the Jewish community in earlier times.”
Read the full article by Josephine McKenna at Sight Magazine.