Archaeologists working beneath Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre have reconstructed an ancient landscape of abandoned stone quarries, cultivated plots and rock-cut tombs—a combination that bears a striking resemblance to the setting described in the Gospel of John for the burial of Jesus.
The findings do not prove that archaeologists have identified the tomb of Jesus. What they do provide is something more tangible: archaeological evidence that the area beneath Christianity’s most famous burial shrine had the kind of landscape described in the ancient text around the period when Jerusalem was still expanding beyond its earlier boundaries.
The results emerge from years of excavations led by Francesca Romana Stasolla of Sapienza University of Rome. The latest synthesis has now been published in the archaeological journal Liber Annuus as a substantial preliminary report covering the 2025 excavation campaign.
From stone quarry to burial ground
Long before Constantine built the first monumental Christian complex here in the fourth century CE, the area looked radically different.
The archaeological investigation shows that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands over part of an extensive quarry on Gareb Hill. Extraction took place in several phases, leaving behind irregular rock surfaces and isolated sections of bedrock as quarrying gradually shifted elsewhere. Once portions of the quarry were abandoned, people began using the landscape differently.
According to the new study, archaeologists identified evidence for both agricultural and funerary reuse of the former quarry. Rock-cut burial spaces occupied parts of the landscape, while other sections were adapted for cultivation.
That combination is what makes the results particularly significant. The Gospel of John describes Jesus’ burial place as close to the crucifixion site and places it within a garden containing a previously unused tomb.
Archaeology cannot establish who was buried in a particular tomb from that description alone. But the emerging reconstruction shows that a landscape combining cultivated ground and rock-cut graves genuinely existed beneath what later became the Holy Sepulchre.
Archaeologists found traces of cultivation
Evidence for cultivation is not based merely on the appearance of the excavated ground. Earlier stages of the project recovered archaeobotanical material from areas where low dry-stone walls created small plots filled with soil. Analyses detected remains associated with cereals, grapes, figs and grasses, while vine wood and pollen evidence suggested the cultivation of grapevines and potentially olive trees.
Stasolla previously explained that these cultivated areas were especially interesting because of the description preserved in John.
During the excavations, her team found that after quarrying ended, low walls were built and soil was introduced between them. The resulting plots transformed parts of what had once been an industrial extraction zone into cultivated ground.
There is an important limitation, however. The botanical remains should not be presented as plants scientifically dated to AD 33. When Stasolla discussed the evidence in 2025, she noted that their archaeological context placed them in the pre-Christian phase of the site, but radiocarbon dating had not yet provided such an exact date.
That makes some current claims that archaeologists have found “olive trees and grapevines dating to AD 33” considerably stronger than the published evidence supports.
A cemetery outside ancient Jerusalem
The burial evidence adds another piece to the reconstruction. During the period traditionally associated with Jesus, the location appears to have been outside Jerusalem’s inhabited urban core. As quarrying ceased, tombs were cut into different levels of the exposed rock. This fits a broader pattern known from ancient Jerusalem, where burials were generally located beyond populated areas.
Stasolla has described the terrain as a former quarry that gradually acquired multiple burials. Centuries later, during the reign of Constantine, one of these rock-cut tombs—the one already revered by Christians as Jesus’ burial place—was separated architecturally from its surroundings and incorporated into the monumental sanctuary.
The latest report is important because the completion of the excavations allows researchers to move beyond individual trenches and begin reconstructing the topography of the entire complex through time.
Constantine transformed the landscape
The excavation also provides physical evidence for the dramatic transformation that occurred after Christianity gained imperial patronage. Constantine commissioned a monumental church complex at the site during the fourth century. Beneath the present Aedicule—the shrine enclosing the traditional tomb—archaeologists identified a large circular marble base associated with an early monumental phase.
Stasolla’s team has suggested that the feature may belong to Constantine’s original treatment of the venerated tomb. Its circular form is notable because some early representations also depict the shrine surrounding the tomb as a circular structure.
Coins recovered elsewhere in the Rotunda provide another chronological marker. A group includes issues minted under Constantius II and Valens, placing associated activity firmly within the fourth century.
The new study also documents previously unknown elements of the Early Christian drainage and water-management system, alongside later modifications extending through the medieval and modern history of the church.
Does this prove the tomb belonged to Jesus?
No archaeological discovery currently establishes that conclusion. There is no surviving inscription naming Jesus, no human remains that could be associated with him, and no archaeological method capable of identifying the occupant of the traditional tomb with certainty.
What the excavations are testing is a different question: was the traditional location physically compatible with what ancient accounts describe? Increasingly, the archaeological answer appears to be yes.
Beneath the monumental church was a landscape outside the earlier city, formed from an abandoned quarry and subsequently occupied by cultivated plots and rock-cut burials. By the fourth century, Christians were already venerating one of those tombs strongly enough for Constantine’s builders to reorganize an enormous religious complex around it.
That does not provide definitive archaeological proof of the tradition, but it does show that the setting preserved at the Holy Sepulchre is consistent with key elements of the ancient burial accounts.
But after centuries during which almost the entire ancient landscape lay concealed beneath one of the world’s most intensively used churches, archaeologists can now reconstruct the setting in unprecedented detail—and it looks considerably more like the landscape described in the Gospel of John than the monumental stone architecture visible in Jerusalem today.
Stasolla, F. R., Brancazi, L., Melega, A., Ricco, A., Vacatello, F., Mattia, V., Miele, F., Nigro, L., & Bisceglia, F. (2025). Archaeological excavations in the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem: 2025 preliminary report. Liber Annuus, 75, 619–716. https://hdl.handle.net/11573/1763575
