Project Background

The 2015 excavation consists of a 5x5m area located within the walled cemetery of Campo Santo (Lazzaretto Nuovo, Venezia), parallel to the perimeter wall. The area was divided into 1m squares and excavated stratigraphically to an average depth of 42cm. The first stratigraphic layer encountered contained only disarticulated and fragmented human remains, animal remains, pottery, and metallic objects. This was interpreted as a seconary deposit potentially dating to the Napoleonic period. 

Eleven individuals were exhumed in 2016 from five contexts. All the recovered skeletons are buried in a supine position. Four burials are oriented east-west with the head to the west (IND 1, 2, 3, and 6) in the traditional Christian manner. One individual is oriented with the head to the south and feet to the north (IND 13) which is an unusual burial orientation. There are three double burials (two skeletons appear to have been buried in one grave at the same time), the remainder being individual inhumations. 

Seven discrete burial contexts (8 individuals) and two secondary were excavated.

 In this season we excavated three discrete burial contexts, a double burial, and one communal burial containing seven individuals. The latter feature was truncated to the west moving the chest and heads of all individuals to an unknown location. The grave was further truncated to the east therefore no lower legs or feet were recovered from the individuals therein.

This season was dedicated to analysing the disarticulated remains recovered from previous field seasons. The purpose was to estimate the miniumum number of individuals recovered from our excavation area. 

This season required the team to recover a number of disarticulated and fragmented bone that had been naturally washed out from the secondary deposit adjacent to our excavation area. In addition, an individual was recovered from a single context, this individual appears to be truncated by a large feature suspected to be a mass grave. One individual from this context was excavated. Archaeologists decided that the feature was likely to be too large to complete in the last few days of the field season, so the feature was reburied. The results were published at the 2023 IAFS conference.

During the 2024 season the team excavated the feature located towards the end of the 2023 field season. It was identified as a communal grave measuring 274cm x 156cm and a maximum depth of 146cm. The grave contained 44 individuals comprising 16 subadults, most covered in layers of lime. A major logistical hurdle was waterlogging; we have reached the waterlevel of the surounding lagoon.