008: Digging anthropology in the Sanisera Necropolis (Menorca – Spain)

General Information

The Sanisera Archaeology Institute for International Field Schools offers an annual archaeology dig on the island of Menorca, off the coast of Spain. Since then it has organized courses for students who come from all over the world to study abroad and who are interested in anthropology.

Death in Rome has been studied in Sanisera since we started digging the first necropolis in 2008. So far we have excavated 90 tombs belonging to a Roman cemetery which could have been related to a basilica in the Roman city if Sanisera, which dates from the 4th and 6th centuries AD. The Osteology corpus in this necropolis includes more than 232 individuals.

The fieldwork focuses on funerary structures, specifically inhumation graves. Students will also participate in lectures on skeletal anatomy and pathologies, classes, exercises and excursions related to the course material.

Fieldwork in the Sanisera Necropolis

Students digging human remains

Individual human skeleton in a tomb of the Sanisera necropolis

Student with a Roman skull from the Sanisera necropolis

Students digging a Roman tomb

The Sanisera Roman Necropolis site