My personal opinion is everything I've read on this points to it being a cemetery being moved, the necropolis for example ? I'm unsure if this is the case, it is a lot of coffins and bodies for it not to have been mentioned in any press, but moving of interred bodies back in them days Should had stood out in the press. Another thing to take into consideration is that 3 thousand bodies is a hell of a lot to bury, a lot of earth moved and would have took a conciderable amount of time to complete. Where did the earth end up ect, I'm looking into this a little took much I think