“Il sito di Santa Maria Maggiore di Vercelli un contesto bioarcheologico di ricerca e formazione”

The underground cemetery of Santa Maria Maggiore in Vercelli was created in the second half of the 18th century at the same time as the upper church and organised using vaulted structures. It contains two large ossuaries and a series of funerary rooms, which were in use until the first decades of the 19th century for members of the Vercelli aristocracy. The remains of the burials of the ancient medieval complex of Santa Maria Maggiore, the city's cathedral during the Early Christian and Early Medieval times, were also gathered at the site. This vast cemetery is at the centre of the project in which the University of Eastern Piedmont is involved, together with the University of Insubria (leader) and the soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le province di Biella Novara Verbano-Cusio-Ossola e Vercelli. The study, which is highly transdisciplinary, combines archaeological and anthropological interests. In particular, it offers the opportunity of investigating funerary structures and practices of the last few centuries, a period often neglected in archaeological research, as well as of exploring the development of an urban area occupied since ancient times. At the same time, a series of palaeobiological data has been recovered which are useful for reconstructing demographic aspects and the state of health of the buried population. The research will also contribute to the regeneration of the entire burial complex, which has been abandoned in recent decades, and to the enhancement of an important bioarchaeological, archaeological and structural context, with a view to its full use by a large audience.