The Medieval Cemetery

Medieval funerary archaeology is an emerging field in Italy. Despite a huge wealth of information about medieval churches and monasteries, very little is understood about medieval burial, cemetery organisation, or the preparation of the corpse.1 Our excavations aimed to explore these issues through an integrated analysis of the cemetery of Villamagna, now the largest published sample of medieval burials in Italy.2 This chapter describes the development of the cemetery and changes in funerary practice in relation to the broader changes in ownership and management of the estate. It considers how funerary evidence can provide information on identity in life as well as shifting patterns in religious practice. Issues of demography, disease, mortality and diet derived from the anthropological and isotopic analysis of the bones are presented below, xxx-xxx, but the results are discussed here where appropriate.