Archaeological area of Piazza Francigena

The archaeological excavation carried out in Piazza Francigena in 2008-2009 by the Civic Archaeological Museum has allowed the reconstruction of an important stage in the long history of the village of Camaiore from the early Middle Ages to the Renaissance, highlighting the various phases of construction of the ecclesiastical and cemetery structures preceding the current Church of San Michele Arcangelo and still preserved under the current paving.

A church from the early Middle Ages
The excavations revealed the existence of an early medieval church, of which part of the walls and the apse were found, dating back to the end of the 9th century AD and preceding the current Church of San Michele Arcangelo. The archaeological data attest that, after an initial phase of frequentation of the place between the 7th and 9th centuries AD, at the end of the 9th century AD a small church was built of which, however, there is no trace in the archive documents.
The building, made of pebble masonry bound with clay mortar, has a semicircular apse; inside, a step separated the presbytery area (reserved for the celebrant) and the nave (intended to accommodate the faithful). The nave's flooring is instead made of small river pebbles fixed into the ground. At the center of the apse is the base of the altar covered with a white layer of lime mortar, a material also used for the floor of the apse which, progressively worn, was restored by reusing fragments of Roman-era tiles.
The external area is used as a cemetery: there are 15 burials dug into narrow and shallow pits, arranged along the wall and near the apse: the deceased, mostly adults, are lying supine with their arms along their bodies and their hands resting on their pelvis, wrapped in cloth sheets without a wooden coffin and without grave goods. One of the burials belongs to a woman of about 40-45 years old, whose skeleton was found with her head near the apse of the church. Thanks to the good state of conservation it was possible to make a reconstruction of the facial features (currently on display at the Civic Archaeological Museum of Camaiore). Anthropological and paleonutritional analyses indicate that these were tall individuals with a balanced diet, with a fair amount of protein, calories and calcium. The privileged burial site confirms the hypothesis that this group of people had a fairly high social status.

The Church of St. Michael the Archangel
At the beginning of the 11th century the building was abandoned and around the middle of the 12th century the few walls still standing were dismantled to reuse the stones in the construction of the new church dedicated to San Michele Arcangelo (today visible in the faithful reconstruction carried out after the bombings of the Second World War), as attested by the Privilege of Pope Alexander III of 1180. The cemetery area was expanded, also occupying the area of the previous church: the documented tombs are arranged in a dense and irregular grid, often cut into each other and the buried are mainly newborns, children and adolescents buried along the east wall of the church. The construction of the hospital of San Michele (which corresponds to the current Museum of Sacred Art) dates back to the 13th century, connected to the church and located along the ancient route of the Via Francigena (now Via IV Novembre). The Via Francigena is the connecting road that leads from France and Northern Italy to Rome: along its route there are churches, monasteries and xenodochia (or hospitalia and hospitia, that is to say hospitals), annexed to sacred buildings and aimed at assisting the poor and the elderly and welcoming wayfarers. The first documentation of the Via Francigena is attested in the travel diary of 990 AD fig4of the archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury, who after having gone on a pilgrimage to Rome to Pope John VI lists the 79 stages (submansiones) of his return journey. Camaiore is noted as Campmaior XXVII submansio, located between Lucca (an important ecclesiastical seat that houses the wooden statue of the Holy Face) and Luni.

The cemetery area continued to be used uninterruptedly until the second half of the 15th century: the graves mainly housed adults, buried very close to each other and often overlapping (the high density of burials is a typical feature of late medieval cemeteries). Pilgrims and wayfarers admitted to the Hospital were also buried there, as evidenced by some archive documents where we read that foreigners who died at the Hospital of San Michele were buried "near the church" (drafts of the Pastoral Visits of 1348 and 1487). The reports of the Pastoral Visits praised the Hospital numerous times for its organization and the care it reserved for strangers, who "were treated like local people". Carbon 14 analysis of a sample from one of the most recent burials provided a dating between 1360 AD and 1450 AD, consistent with the indications of the archive documents. The same documents then confirm that from 1500 onwards it was no longer a custom to bury the deceased in the area of the Church of San Michele Arcangelo.

The Furnace
On the back of Palazzo Tori-Massoni, the archaeological investigation has instead brought to light numerous sections of medieval walls, made with river pebbles and limestone stones bound with lime mortar that trace part of the perimeter of a large quadrangular room, with two pillars in the center, attributable to a building with the main facade along today's Via IV Novembre, perhaps with a vaulted ground floor. A second building, adjacent to the previous one on the south-east side, is visible only in a small portion.
The buildings were subsequently demolished and the entire area was covered with a dump of earth rich in ceramic fragments dating back to the end of the 15th century, in particular 'archaic majolica' and 'graffite', two ceramic productions typically present on the Renaissance table in the form of bowls, plates, and dishes of various sizes. The traces of malformations and imprecise decorations found on many fragments suggest that they were waste from a larger production intended for trade. Furthermore, the presence of a large quantity of 'cock's foot spacers' (terracotta elements used to separate stacked ceramic artefacts during firing) leads to the hypothesis of the presence on the site (perhaps in the building previously described), or in the immediate vicinity, of a ceramic kiln. This hypothesis is supported by some archive documents which mention a kiln of 'bona terra cotta colorata' in Camaiore already active between 1348 and 1369 and a 'factory of colored earthenware', owned by an inhabitant living in Sesto San Michele, between the 15th and 16th centuries.