Archaic necropolis with luxury grave goods found in southern Italy

An archaic necropolis replete with well-preserved organic remains and luxury grave goods has been unearthed in Gragnano, outside of Naples, in Southern Italy’s Campania region. It dates to the first half of the 6th century B.C. and is exceptionally significant, both for the exceptional state of preservation of the graves and as a rich new source of information that will rewrite the history of the funerary traditions, commerce, artisanal activity, social organization and lifestyles of one of the most important pre-Roman communities in Southern Italy.

Gragnano is located in the ancient Ager Stabianus, the plain around the luxury resort residential center of Stabiae where opulent villas of the Roman elite overlooked the Bay of Naples. The necropolis far predates the summer palaces of the Roman aristocracy. Naples was founded as Parthenope, a colony of the Greek city of Cumae in the 8th century B.C. Its location on a promontory allowed the town to control maritime traffic and therefore trade in the gulf on the Tyrrhenian Sea. It was then refounded as Neapolis (New City) in the early 6th century B.C. by Cumaen aristocrats.

Archaeologists discovered the burial ground in a preventative archaeology excavation before the planned expansion of the historic Pastificio Garofalo pasta factory. Since February 2025, the team unearthed 85 graves, identifying the remains of 16 adults, 4 children and 15 infants.

The necropolis dates to the time of the founding of Neaopolis, and the high quality of the grave goods attests to the elite status of the people interred there. They were buried in sealed tufa sarcophagi that withstood the elements so well that archaeologists were able to recover organic artifacts including textiles, wooden objects and woven baskets from the graves.

Both inside and outside of the sarcophagi also discovered rare goods imported from around the Mediterranean. Among the luxury objects found are Egyptian scarabs from Naukratis (a Greek trading colony in the Nile Delta), zoomorphic carved amber, finely carved silver, a wide variety of Etruscan bronzes, Etruscan bucchero pottery, imported Attic pottery and weapons. Whole sets of pottery were found completely intact with all component parts.

The finds, including the surviving skeletal remains, are being studied and conserved in the archaeological laboratories of the Superintendency. Gragnano city officials are proposing that some of the finds be exhibited in the Gragnano Pasta Museum which will be built on the campus of the factory a short distance from where the necropolis was discovered.

* This article was originally published here