The man and woman were likely buried facing each other in Italy in the 5th century A.D.
A
pair of skeletons still holding hands was found recently in Italy. The man and
woman were buried at the same time between the 5th and 6th century.
The skeletal remains of a Roman-era couple reveal the pair has been holding
hands for 1,500 years.
Italian archaeologists say the man and woman were buried at the same time
between the 5th and 6th century A.D. in central-northern Italy. Wearing a bronze
ring, the woman is positioned so she appears to be gazing at her male partner.
"We believe that they were originally buried with their faces staring into each
other. The position of the man's vertebrae suggests that his head rolled after
death," Donato Labate, the director of the excavation at the archaeological
superintendence of Emilia-Romagna, told Discovery News.
The tender discovery was made during ordinary construction work in Modena and
was announced this week. Labate explained the dig revealed three layers of
scientific interest.
The deeper layer, some 23 feet below the surface, contained the remains of
Roman-era structures, including a calcara where mortar was produced. The ruins
belonged to the suburbs of Modena, then called Mutina.
A middle layer, at a depth of about 10 feet, featured 11 burials, while a third
stratification on top of the necropolis, revealed seven empty tombs," Labate
said.
Excavated by archaeologist Licia Diamanti, the skeleton couple belonged to the
11 tomb necropolis. According to Labate, the simple fossa (trench) tombs suggest
that the people buried there were not particularly rich.
"They were possibly the inhabitants of a farm," Labate said
The area was subjected to several floods from the nearby river Tiepido -- which
may have caused the male skeleton's skull to roll away from the female skeleton
after burial. The necropolis was covered by alluvial deposits, and on top of
them, another seven tombs were built.
"These burials were empty. Most likely, they were covered by another flood just
after their construction. We think it was a catastrophic flood which occurred in
589, as reported by the historian Paul the Deacon," Labate said.
The two skeletons, which are poorly preserved, will be now studied by Giorgio
Gruppioni, an anthropologist at the University of Bologna. The research includes
establishing the couple's age, their relationship and the possible cause of
death.
"In antiquity, it is not surprising to learn of spouses or members of a family
dying at the same time: whenever epidemics such as the Black Plague ravaged
Europe, one member of the family would often die while the family was trying to
bury another member," Kristina Killgrove, a biological anthropologist at the
University of North Carolina, told Discovery News.
In 2007 another skeleton couple, buried between 5,000 and
6,000 years ago, was found at a Neolithic site near Mantua, just 25 miles south
of Verona, where Shakespeare set the romantic story of Romeo and Juliet.
Locked in a tender embrace, they also looked at one another in apparent defiance
of time and decay.
"The two couples are separated in time by five millennia, and both evoke an
uplifting tenderness. I have been involved in many digs, but I've never felt so
moved," Labate said.
According to Killgrove, the positioning of the Modena skeletons, looking at one
another and holding hands, indeed suggests they may have been a couple.
"Whoever buried these people likely felt that communicating their relationship
was just as important in death as it was in life," Killgrove said.