Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:Archaeologists excavating in France discovered a 16 th -century public gallows. -century public gallows. Archaeologists in France recently uncovered a 16th-century public gallows with 10 mass burial pits at the site of a modern-day fairground. At first, archaeologists weren’t sure what to make of the site, INRAP wrote in a translated statement. The bodies, occasionally in pieces, were degraded by being tossed into pits, and sometimes dismembered and piled on others.