Fresh finds beneath the Church of the Holy Sepulchre add hard evidence of a first-century garden and the site’s earlier life as a quarry.
Professor Francesca Romana Stasolla of Rome’s Sapienza University said her team identified olive and grape pollen and seeds “dating back approximately 2,000 years,” reinforcing John 19:41’s reference to a garden beside the crucifixion and tomb. “The quarry had to be gradually abandoned, and after the stone extraction ended, it was used for agricultural areas and tombs. That’s how it must have been in the 1st century CE,” she said, according to the New York Post.
In layers below the church floor the archaeologists also lifted Iron-Age pottery, oil lamps and coins. These artefacts “document the area’s agricultural history,” according to All That’s Interesting, and bridge the gap between the quarry phase and the Roman-period burials previously reported.
To visualise what they cannot fully expose, the team has turned to ground-penetrating radar and 3-D mapping. “While we have not been able to see the entire church excavated in one glance, new technologies are allowing us to reconstruct the bigger picture in our labs,” Stasolla said.
She called the operation “undoubtedly a strategic excavation for understanding the development of the city and its process of Christian sacralization.” Stasolla added that work “is still in progress, and the study will reserve many surprises,” with digging scheduled to resume for several months once Easter visitors have departed.
The project, licensed by the Israel Antiquities Authority and authorised by the Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic and Roman Catholic custodians of the church, is the most extensive campaign at the site in nearly 200 years. The Holy Sepulchre, founded in 326 CE by Emperor Constantine, now draws an estimated four million pilgrims and tourists annually.
While debate over the exact location of Jesus’ death and burial persists, Stasolla reiterated that separating belief from evidence is essential: “Whether someone believes or not in the historicity of the Holy Sepulchre, the fact that generations of people did is objective.”
The article was written with the assistance of a news analysis system.
