Archaeologists Followed a Forgotten Staircase—and Uncovered a 400-Year-Old Burial Vault

2 min readRestoration work inside Dijon’s Church of Saint-Philibert opened up a much older story beneath the floor: a late medieval burial vault, earlier graves, and stone sarcophagi tied to the centuries when the Roman world was giving way to the Early Middle Ages.The discovery came out of repair work at the Church of Saint-Philibert in Dijon, France, where the building itself had become part of the problem. Saint-Philibert had been used for salt storage in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the 1970s, workers installed a heated concrete slab over salt-contaminated ground, and the trapped, heated salts helped crack and damage the stone church.A public market notice published in February described a project-management mission for rehabilitating Saint-Philibert, including a first phase focused on the church’s pillars and a second phase aimed at the bell tower and spire. The notice set a March 26 bid deadline, listed an estimated June 1 start date, and described a 120-month duration.As crews investigated the damaged foundations, the work opened several windows into the church’s buried past. In the transept, archaeologists found a late medieval burial vault containing adults and children, according to France’s National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research, or Inrap. The dead had been buried in simple shrouds, with a few coins and rosaries placed with them.But that wasn’t all.The archaeological team—led by Clarisse Couderc and Carole Fossurier—also discovered slab tombs from the 11th through 13th centuries, and even six sarcophagi from the Late Antiquity and Merovingian periods.The current Church of Saint-Philibert was founded in the second half of the 12th century, with later additions including a porch, bell tower, spire, and side chapel. Below that level, archaeologists found evidence of earlier building phases. Some of that evidence had first appeared during excavations in 1923, while Inrap’s public summary says herringbone masonry found beneath the central nave suggests the northwest corner of a first church around the 10th century.The sarcophagi were even older, though, and one of the six coffins featuring a sculpted lid. The Inrap experts believe the finding of burials from so many eras shows that the church was an important funerary center during the switch from the Roman era to the Early Middle Ages (the sarcophagi were likely inside another ancient building when first buried).Who knows what else remains to be discovered?Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland.