The excavation fell within the category of superintendency watching-briefs, controls which are systematically applied – among others – in the case of projects involving street furniture in piazzas or spaces adjacent to ancient churches. It was immediately clear that there was a multi-stratified necropolis on the site, despite this the situation required a solution that mediated between the research objects and the necessity of returning, in a relatively short space of time, the community’s spaces in an orderly and useable condition. Therefore, it was decided to limit the intervention to documenting what was present down to the depth required by the project, despite knowing that the burials and stratigraphy would not be fully investigated. Based on this principle the opening of a deep trench was exploited for reading sections and the stratigraphic sequence. This proved useful for the definition of the levels on which the necropolis was laid out and for the identification of one of the ancient cemetery’s limits.

Notwithstanding the situation, the excavation of the necropolis made it possible to trace an interesting picture of the local population, between the 17th (perhaps even the 16th) and 19th century, via an anthropological study commissioned by the superintendency from the Arc-Team company. The data was collected in an open source data-base, linked to a geo-referencing system, with the aim of experimenting sharing of the results on-line. Faced with a series of problems raised by this choice, with particular reference to data protection, it was decided to link the data-base to a Creative Commons license, as this seemed to provide sufficient guarantees, even though some aspects are still the subject of discussion.