Nuove considerazioni sul ritrovamento longobardo di Campo Martino Corto (Zanica)

The discovery of a Lombard tomb, which originally contained three bodies (with a reused Roman gravestone of the 1st century AD), took place at Zanica in the Martino Corto field in 1846 and was reported by the local archaeologist Paolo Vimercati Sozzi. The presence of three golden crosses inside the grave reinforces the hypothesis of a multiple grave. The three skulls were buried in a near hole: this peculiarity is possibly connected to the so-called “skull worship” that includes some veneration practices. Certainly, one of the dead was a horseman, as the spurs suggest. However, because of the loss of the skeletons and the variability of the customs, it is possible to fix neither the age of the three deads, nor the sex of the other two individuals. The equipment is the only element that allows to date the finds: the type of the silver decoration indicates a time span between the end of the 6th century and the last thirty years of the 7th century.