Discovery in Puebla: human burials from the time of Maximilian of Habsburg were found

The Ministry of Culture and the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) announced that “six primary and two secondary burials, with at least 20 individuals” were located in the San Francisco Temple in Puebla, of which the case of a “man with a gunshot wound to the iliac bone and the discovery of the projectile itself that hurt him.”

It is known that the temple in the historic center of Puebla was one of the most important forts during the war between Mexico and France. The information was released on Tuesday, March 22, 2022 through a statement from the INAH.

In addition, the document explained that since January, the federal Ministry of Culture, together with a team of specialists from the National Institute of Anthropology, have been carrying out “archaeological rescue actions in this building, (...) most of which could be related to nineteenth-century epidemics and, especially with the time of the French invasion and the empire of Maximilian of Habsburg, between 1862 and 1867.”

The researcher at the INAH Puebla Center, Manuel Melgarejo Pérez, reported that this conclusion could be reached thanks to data resulting from archaeological, historical and physical anthropology works. “The finding was recorded during the INAH's monitoring of the works carried out by the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Puebla on the site.”

It was also pointed out that the San Francisco Temple has been an important place since its construction, because although in the mid-18th century it began as a chapel of a Jesuit school, due to the war conflicts that the country began to cross, it soon became “a temporary hospital, a prison and even a stage of the Mexican resistance during the French Intervention”.

The specialist emphasized that thanks to the discovery of the male individual with the gunshot wound to his left iliac bone and the projectile, “it is theorized that man died in the middle of the war against France”.

Regarding this meeting, the physical anthropologist Lizbeth Chicas Martínez, pointed out that “he had to die due to an impact on the abdomen, since he probably passed through important organs, and at the time it was unlikely that a person would survive with a projectile inside the body.”

Other materials were also found such as shoe soles, clothing buttons and a metal cross that a woman should have worn as a necklace, which are estimated to correspond to the second half of the 19th century. Similarly, the historian of the INAH Puebla Center, Jesús Joel Peña Espinosa, indicated that “the Temple of San Francisco Xavier was used as a fortification by the Republican fighters after the French advance over the forts of Loreto and Guadalupe, in 1863 ″.

It was explained that through fieldwork and laboratory analyses, the other bodies that were found will continue to be analyzed, in this way the sex, age and other characteristics of the individuals can be determined. “According to the group of experts, which is also advised by the physical anthropologist of the INAH Puebla Center, Zaid Lagunas Rodríguez, it is observed that of the six primary deposits, five are male and one female.”

Based on the studies that have been carried out, the physical anthropologist Chicas Martínez said that it can be said that the bodies found are of adults who “at least were over 25 years old at the time of death”.

This discovery is a great opportunity for experts to learn more about the funeral practices of previous centuries. At the moment it was detailed that “it is appreciated that most of the burials in the primary anatomical position state that they have had coffins”.

However, the historian Joel Peña Espinosa remarked that a “man was also found lying under the northern transept, whose burial was only delimited with lime, hence it is believed that he died before 1850, the year from which the usual use of coffins for burials in the city of Puebla is recorded”.

Likewise, it was revealed that individuals under the age of 15 were found in a deposit, which “raises the possibility that there would be an altar there dedicated to a saint linked to childhood”. Experts say it used to be common for people to ask to be buried under church pillars so that they “symbolically continue to hold temples”

Finally, it was pointed out that in order to give adequate treatment to human remains and materials found, a laboratory will be set up in the Temple of San Francisco Javier.

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