While digging in the Roman Forum, Italian archaeologists have found a well-preserved skeleton of a woman who apparently predates the city's foundation.

The discovery revealed the astonishing fact it dates back to 3,000 years ago - at least 300 years before the traditional date of Rome's founding, 753 BC.

It has long been known that Bronze Age people were living on the site where the ancient Romans founded their city.

Archaeologist Anna De Santis, who took part in the dig, told BBC the unveiled skeleton pertained to a woman aged about 30 when she died.

She was evidently of high birth, for she was wearing an amber necklace with a gold pendant, a bronze hair-fastener and a bronze ring on one of her fingers. The archaeologists also found four bronze clasps, two of which may have been used to hold her shroud in place.

Experts in Roman pre-history are intrigued by the new burial site, not far from the forum where Caesar's body was burned after his assassination 1,000 years later. It marks a transition in social habits, from cremation - the customary form of burial at that period of pre-history - to burial in the ground.

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