053: Bioarchaeological fieldwork of an underground funerary crypt of the San Mateo Church

General Information

The Sanisera Archaeology Institute for International Field Schools offers an annual international archaeology program. Since then it has organized courses for students who come from all over the world to study abroad and who are interested in bioarchaeology, mortuary, anthropology and osteology.

The San Mateo Church is one of the churches with the greatest architectural and artistic interest in the city of Jerez (Cádiz, Spain), founded during the medieval period, most of its building presents the typical Gothic architecture of the 14th - 15th centuries, with additions from the Renaissance and Baroque art.

The objective in this course of bioarcheological fieldwork will be to excavate the burial niches dating from the seventeenth century of the underground funerary crypt that belongs to the San Mateo Church. An old plan of the church basement confirms that the church basement houses a large number of burial tombs. This will be the first time this funerary crypt has been excavated.

In the period between the 16th - 18th centuries, the population that lived in the city of Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz, Spain), was administered by neighborhoods, to which parish churches were assigned, which organized both the usual worship, like the system of burial of the faithful in cemeteries or underground crypts.

From the 16th century, the vast majority of Christian churches used their subsoils to bury the dead in individual tombs and in crypts to create sepulchral chapels that will house members of the same family or of the same brotherhood or community.

The crypts were very particular spaces, located in the underground area of Christian churches. To access them, one descended by stairs that were usually sealed by large slabs that blocked their entrance. The dimensions of the burial space in the crypts were very small and limited. For this reason, superimposed rooms were built in brick and mortar in the form of niches attached to the walls of the crypt vertically, arranged in rows to accommodate the largest possible number of deceased. The size of the niche was conditioned by the body dimensions of a single deceased.

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

 

 

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Main gallery of the Church of San Mateo offering its splendor in Gothic art.

Archive map representing the tombs found in the subsoil of the church to be excavated soon

Stairs that descend to the underground of the funeral crypt.

Burial niches from the 17th century with visible presence of human remains

Students will practice excavation work following the method applied in bioarchaeology