The adult and child skeletons were found in the Italian coastal town of Fano (Picture: EPA)
Two medieval skeleton of what are thought to be a mother embracing a young child has been unearthed in Italy.
The discovery was made after workers carried out renovation works on a square called Piazza Costa in the coastal town of Fano, in Presaro Urbino province.
The skeletons are definitely of an adult and child, and initial indications suggest the former is female, according to Ilaria Venanzoni, an archaeologist from the Superintendence of Fine Arts and Landscape for Ancona and Pesaro Urbino.
She told Italian news agency ANSA: ‘It is plausible that a family member is holding the child. A child who seems to have fallen asleep in an eternal sleep, under the protective gaze of what we like to imagine today was his mother.’
She said DNA analysis of both skeletons would be able to determine whether the adult was the child’s mother.
Roman remains possibly belonging to a house or thermal facility have previously been found where the skeletons were unearthed, Ms Venanzoni explained.
It appears as if the adult is embracing the child(Picture: EPA)
An archaeologist with the skeletons (Picture: EPA)
And a church with a convent attached was built there during medieval times, she added.
Last month, skeletons with wooden buckets on their feet and rings around their necks from the Dark Ages were discovered in a cemetery in Ukraine.
More than 100 skeletons have been unearthed in the 1,000-year-old graveyard near Kyiv.
The mysterious burial site is believed to be a pagan-era or early Christian cemetery, and provides a glimpse into the Dark Ages – the period in time between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Italian Renaissance.
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