Italy's Lake Mezzano
Archaeologists Mapped a Lost Village That’s Been Hidden Beneath a Lake for 3,000 Years
The community living on Lake Mezzano 3,000 years ago left behind plenty of Bronze Age artifacts in addition to the wooden posts that help up their village.
By Tim NewcombPublished: Oct 24, 2025 10:00 AM EDT
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underwater pile building adventure in lake atter
Yannick Tylle//Getty Images
Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
Underwater archaeologists mapped 600 wooden posts that once held up an ancient village.
The Italian community living on Lake Mezzano left behind plenty of Bronze Age artifacts.
The history of fire at the site is shown, even in bronze artifacts.
A Bronze Age village resting—literally—on top of an Italian lake had been lost to time. But underwater archaeologists are now recovering that village’s history.
A team of experts dove under Italy’s Lake Mezzano, a small, volcanically-formed lake in northern Lazio, where they not only mapped 600 underwater posts that once held up the pile-dwelling village, but they also retrieved more than 25 artifacts from a Bronze Age site existing between 1700 and 1150 B.C.E.
Led by the Superintendence of Archaeology, Fine Arts, and Landscape for the region, a team of divers explored the ancient, now-submerged stilt settlement looking to document and preserve the remains of the lake village. The team, according to a translated statement, found more than 600 wooden posts embedded in the heavy clay soil, mapping an area that covered about a third of the known area of the settlement. By removing sediment with suction hoses, crews were able start to form what the site may have once looked like, outlining the structure of the village.
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https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/archaeology/a69033178/underwater-posts-lake-village/