A Dramatic Event in Late Roman Florence

the Anomalous Burial Site Discovered beneath the Uffizi Gallery

Pacciani, Elsa (ed.)

A Dramatic Event in Late Roman Florence: The Anomalous Burial Site Discovered beneath the Uffizi Gallery presents a multi-disciplinary scientific investigation arising from excavations under the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. Investigations revealed traces of a striking, hitherto unknown episode and made it possible to write an entirely new chapter of the city’s ancient history. Between the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 5th century AD this space – then a strip of land between the walls of Roman Florentia and the River Arno – was chosen as the burial place for dozens of inhabitants who had died within a short time span. Indeed, what has survived the expansion of the medieval and Renaissance city represents a small part of an originally much larger emergency burial area used in the course of a dramatic event of considerable proportions, most probably an epidemic, of which there is no historical record. The scientific investigations described here aim to understand, through a synergetic and coordinated approach, not only the cause of these deaths but also the historical and socioeconomic context of this event.
The volume therefore collects contributions by several specialists in different disciplines: anthropology, medicine, numismatics, C14 dating, palaeogenetics, palaeobacteriology, and palaeoparasitology. The results are of considerable historical interest: they reveal contemporary living conditions, which contributed to the onset of mortality; the event was likely a contributing factor to subsequent well-known demographic changes; and its chronology suggests a probable relationship with the first barbarian aggression against the city.