(JTA) — A Spanish historian has identified and catalogued 107 tombs in a 13th-century Jewish cemetery in Toledo.

The cemetery was partially unearthed in 2008, but the delineation and archeological study of the graves was only recently completed, according to the Spanish news agency, EFE.

The archeologist leading the excavations, Arturo Ruiz Taboada, told EFE earlier this month that the people buried in the 107 Jewish tombs he delineated, were “well preserved” and deposited unusually deep in the ground, some over nine feet from ground level. The identity of many people buried at the site is still unknown.

The deep burial may have been to ensure the Jews deposited there are not buried with the remains of other people, Jews and non-Jews alike, who had been buried in the area, Taboada told the news agency.

Archeologists first learned of the cemetery’s existence in 2008, when human bones were found in the grounds of a local school. The Spanish government began excavating there but stopped following protests by Jewish groups.

Local authorities in Toledo — once a major center of Jewish life before the expulsion of Spain’s Jewish communities in 1492 — had offered to hand over the bones for reburial at another site, but they were eventually reburied in 2011 at the same cemetery at the request of the local Jewish community as well as the Conference of European Rabbis, and the Committee for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe.

The archeologist said that some burial plots contained whole families, including several tombs where mothers were buried with newborn infants.