Archaeologists in southern Italy have uncovered the graves of two children who were buried wearing large bronze belts nearly 2,500 years ago. The metallic accessories are unusual because they are typically found only in adult male burials from the pre-Roman Samnite culture.
During recent work at the site of a former tobacco factory in Pontecagnano, a town in the Campania region of southwest Italy, archaeologists excavated part of an ancient cemetery containing 34 burials dated to the fourth and third centuries B.C., according to a translated statement from the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of Salerno and Avellino. Roughly half of the graves contained the skeletons of children between the ages of 2 and 10 years old.
