2014 Season, Here We Come

The new season at Poggio Colla is underway and we are back on top of the hill exploring the ancient Etruscan past. As usual, brambles overtook the site, but this time, we made the students help us remove them. Ha! Suckers.

We are finally finished unbackfilling two trenches, after days of picking, shoveling, and wheelbarrowing. PC 45 has been unveiled!

We broke ground in my old trench after leaving it abandoned last season. Interesting new info about the site's construction history has already been revealed and, for once, it makes sense. I am in stratigraphy heaven!

Good night, sweet trench

Alas, lovely trench PC 42's days have come to a close.



Actually, they came to a close at the beginning of August, but, well, I haven't quite got around to commemorating the trench's final moments.

In the end, PC 42 was excavated down to bedrock which revealed several walls and a good deal of construction evidence. We found a fair number of post-holes and cuttings in the bedrock and a lot of levelling fill.

Most of PC 42's scarps were a nightmare, thanks to tree trunks and the ancient dumped debris that makes sculpting scarps into vertical faces - 'like glass'- the bane of undergraduates.

On the last day of fieldwork, a tarp was laid in the trench and all the dirt we had removed during the season was dumped back in. This is called 'backfilling' and is done in order to protect the trench from the elements, as well as clandestinii (looters). Watching all that dirt go back in - well, it hurts the heart a little to see it done.

Backfilling at Poggio Colla in 2004.

It also hurts everywhere else a little, too. Actually, a lot. I'll be honest. Backfilling was the one day where the physical pain was so bad I wanted to cry. It was a nice reminder that age and decrepitude even conquers archaeologists.

Ultimately I did survive Backfill Day, though. So too did PC 42's students, who were total champs and made the season really spectacular.

Thanks, guys: Cassie, Kristen, Morgan, me, Sarah, Jack.

For now, PC 42 sits lonely upon its wooded hill, tree roots already weaseling down into the soft empty soil that has replaced its 2300 years of stratigraphy. The Mugello Valley is a quieter place, without the hoard of filthy American students stomping about in a fine impersonation of 'Pig Pen.' I went on to see a large part of Italy over the subsequent three weeks (more on this later), but in the end, the Mugello still holds pride of place as my favorite part of Italy. Mushroom hunters, wild boars and lightening storms just aren't the same anywhere else!

Me and the Mugello at dusk, as seen from the amazing restaurant 'Casa di Caccia.'

Rainless

Currently I am in Campania and the sky is the never-changing cloudless blue that I became familiar with in Greece. A few weeks ago, though, it came as a shock to find that excavations sometimes actually have to deal with rain. Sure, I knew rain fell on British excavations and on Jamestown and stuff; but having never experienced it myself, it didn't seem like an archaeological reality. I was spoiled in Greece, where it stops raining in early June and then, well, that's it - no more moisture for the rest of the summer. The Mugello Valley, on the other hand, turned out to be wetter than I anticipated.

At first I was a bit...perplexed...by the whole covering-the-trenches-with-tarps-at-night thingy. And then I found out why it was necessary.

Bailing out PC 40.

In the end, the tarps were not wholly effective and some trenches got a bit...damp. This was especially unfortunate for those students digging through a deep layer made up of dark, ashy soil. Which turned into a gruesome greyish-brown ooze. They ended up having to sift the mud by hand.

Robert of PC 41, covered in black slime.

A PC 41 bucket. Yuck.

Alas, my own PC 42 did not escape unscathed, either. Yet somehow my students were awesome enough to stay relatively clean despite it all.

PC 42's sparkling clean Jack and Cassie excavate a muddy rubble pit that turned out to be a robbing trench for yet another wall, removed and filled in during the Hellenistic period.

Where's my motorino helmet?

The student diggers of Poggio Colla have no idea how lucky they are.

Why? Because they get a four-day weekend in the middle of a six-week season. This luxury is generally unheard of. But the best part, of course, is that since the students get a four-day weekend, so do the supervisors.

As much as I love the Mugello Valley and its greenery, I felt it was time to get out and to do something touristy and beachy. Thus I took off for a sunny holiday on the Tuscan island of Elba with Angela Trentecoste, the site zooarchaeologist (animal bone specialist).

Yes, that Elba.

Perhaps because I've gotten more elderly, it's been a while since I've had any haphazard Mediterranean adventures - my days of island hopping by myself in the Cyclades are nearly ten years past. But Elba and Angela provided plenty to make up for it. Such as:

Campeggio. We borrowed some camping gear (thanks, Phil!) and set up our little tent in the rather interesting Camping Aquaviva. This involved crushing a pillow over my head at night to keep out the blaring 'Macarena' and likewise crushing a pillow over my head to keep out the ear-plug defying pigeon cooing directly above our tent at 6am. (At least I could throw rocks at the pigeon).

We rented a motorino and toured the north and west of the island. This involved various adventures such as driving on a windy cliffside road in the dark with no real headlamp and getting entirely lost in the steep cobbled medieval alleys of Portoferraio, until some nice angel of mercy led us out to freedom on her own motorino.

There was plenty of swimming to be had and I actually got to do some diving, something I'd not yet done in the Mediterranean. There was a decent bit of wildlife, to my surprise: eels, baracuda, octopus, manta ray, grouper, etc.

Don't think, of course, that it was all fun and games. I got the requisite share of antiquities in at medieval Marciana, perched on a hill, where we were able to visit sparse 13th-century chapels and the island's little archaeological museum.


Sure, this pottery doesn't look like much, but I've spent the summer obsessed with these bowls and their sharply outturned rims. Many of them rest on pedestal feet and have elaborate profiles, including the fancy one we found in our trench. They're called piatelli.

And somehow, by complete accident, every place we stopped to eat had drop-dead-benissimo food and gorgeous views.

Dinner and a view at the little harbour of Enfola.

I probably wouldn't recommend Elba to visitors since it was a tourist mecca more than anything else, but for a four-day escape from the Mugello, it perfectly hit the spot.

Hands Off: Tools As Artifacts at the Archaeological Dig

From the beginning of its existence as a discipline, archaeology has been about objects. While its true that for many projects the dirt itself is starting to get the same respect as the items that are uncovered in it, archaeologists cannot help but remain object-oriented. All day you look for artifacts in the soil- tiles, pottery, worked stone, metals, weaving implements, tools. Your day is centered around 'things.' Your hands are constantly touching and feeling objects to help in their identification - is this ceramic or is it a rock? Your eyes and your body are constantly on tippy-toe, waiting, hanging on the potential appearance of 'things' with every passing clod of earth.

But of course, modern 'things' are just as important as the ancient ones in an archaeologist's daily life; they can receive the same sort of intense focus, adulation and worship as the ancient treasures themselves. I'm talking about tools.

Everyone knows what its like to have a work utensil that's used day after day. It's quite easy to develop a relationship with it, whether it's a crappy keyboard that you grow to loathe or a favorite pen that you jealously guard. It can be a major bummer if your favorite item gets lost, or breaks, or is stolen by a co-worker. It's the same way with an archaeologist's tools. At most excavations, there's often a morning rush as everyone tries to grab their favorite things before someone else does. There's a race for handpicks, for dustpans, for bristle brushes, for the lightest shovel and the sturdiest bucket. These tools can cause a lot of unacknowledged jostling, secret irritation, silent glowering and intense satisfaction.

I myself have become quite fond of the old rounded trowel I found in the tool shed this summer. I bet every person on the Poggio Colla excavation has their own secret attachment. Some of those human-tool relationships are a bit more obvious.


Take PC 42's student-digger Morgan, for example, who has a tool with a story. And a name - Tiger. Most of the students went off to Home Depot or Lowes to buy their trowels before they came to Italy, which means that most of the trowels look pretty much the same. But Morgan found one at her own house. It turns out that her parents once built a deli and her dad was tiling the interior. He shaped his trowel to make it more useful for laying tile, in contrast to the flat brick-laying trowel. And so Morgan decided to adopt her Dad's tool, which he had created and inadvertently imbued with sentiment.


Sure, you can only use it with one hand because if you flip the blade you'll destroy everything in its path. It's a vicious weapon and can bite the hand that wields it; it's a trowel that demands respect. But it's master is Morgan.

Some of the tools are a little more serious. There are even a few that only staff members are allowed to use, for obvious insurance reasons. Like the ax.

PC 42, the ax in use. As it turns out, trench supervisor Kyle used to be a competitive lumber jack. Be gone, tree stump!
And when these really serious tools break, waiting for their replacements can leave everyone on edge. The recent shattering of the ax-handle was just such an affair. At least now we've got it back, and rotten tree stumps are once more flying off the side of the hill.
But besides being mean, lean, archaeological-context-destruction machines, our tools can be an endless source of entertainment as well. They can make a person happy, when not giving blisters and callouses or accidentally stabbing you.

PC 42 student-digger Jack displays the proper way to double-fist the handpick.
While our focus on the ancient objects may be well-recognized, the archaeologist's daily obsession with modern tools is, I think, just as great. Um, unless it's just me.
Keep your paws off my trowel.

Trench Talk

Just a quick update from Poggio Colla and sweltering, blistering Tuscany. It's hot! Things are going along well in the trench. In fact, today was by far our most exciting day yet. Trench 42 now has several different walls and all sorts of spaces in need of excavation. If you want to read more about it, check out the little blog I had to write for the project's website.

So you want to know what happens in my day? We head up every day before the students at 6am so the supervisors get a little time to get some serious work done.

The trench supervisors of PC 43, taking advantage of the dirt pile.

Then the students arrive and we attack the dirt with all we've got, stand around looking perplexed, or play trench games (like 'Guess what so-and-so was like in highschool'). Either that or we're stuffing our faces at Cookie Break.

Members of PC 42 (my trench!) revealing a Hellenistic-era wall. Thank the Lords of Cobal for the Italian forestry service, which declared that the chestnut trees on the hill are protected, and thus ensuring that we're protected, too - from the sun and the hell-sent kamikaze flies that come with it.

The students have had all sorts of workshops, learning about everything from roofing systems to pottery to settlement patterns.

Angela Trentacoste, the Bone Lady, teaches the students about zooarchaeology.

Stratigraphically, things have really picked up in the last few days. In fact, there's been an actual flurry of archaeological activity. Picks flying, trowels slicing, sieves swishing. Tomorrow I promise I'll have exciting things to report, before it's off to Elba or some other beachy place for our four day weekend.

This is what an archaeological flurry looks like. Myself and trench assistant supervisor Mike Guarino.

Heartbreaker

Here at the Poggio Colla excavation, I eat dinner every evening at the student dig house, where Beppina and her husband Bruno lay out a fantabulous spread. The house is called 'Podere della Vigna,' which pretty much translates as 'vineyard.' I actually do have to walk through a vineyard to get there. One of the best parts is that there at the top of the hill Beppina and Bruno have taken in a little stray who has melted the hearts of every college-aged person in the near vicinity.

His name is Romeo. Let's all say it in Italian: Row-may-OH.



Every excavation or study abroad project ends up having a faunal mascot of some sort. This little guy has turned into ours. Somehow every little thing he does is mesmorizing. Watching his every move is more fun than TV. If he happens to be present during any educational lecture, the learning that actually occurs is minimal. As it's been a while since I posted any gratuitous pictures of cuteness, I might as well let loose with them now.

He recently learned to pounce, so he attacks everything. He can be a vicious little thing now that he's also learned to bite. The other day he got me on the chin and then, as dainty as you please, he practically bit off my nostril.

He can even camaflougue himself.

And of course, he's adorable especially when he runs out of steam.

Comatose.

A quick photo intro to Poggio Colla

Greetings from Italy. It may seem shocking, but after almost ten years of work in Greece, I am excavating in Tuscany this summer. The reason is simple. While most of my experience is in Greece and my dissertation is on Greek material, my secret love is Etruria and Etruscan religion. Therefore, I am happy to say that this summer I am working at the Etruscan hilltop site of Poggio Colla.

Greg Warden, the excavation director, lectures to the Poggio Colla field staff at the Dicomano museum last week. Those are Etruscan grave cippi (markers) in the background.

The Poggio Colla excavation is a field school that has been running for about 16 years now. The designation ‘field school’ means that undergrads come here to learn archaeological methods. They attend lectures, they have homework assignments and during the day they excavate. There are about 20 students, four trenches and a wide variety of staff.

My trench is the Trench at the End of the Universe – that is, it's Trench #42. (If you didn’t get that Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reference, then shame on you.)

Me and PC-42.

Normal archaeological goings-on. That guy on top is my trenchmate and fellow staff member, Mike.

The students move the tile pile (a gigantic mound of trashy tile fragments accumulated over 16 years of excavation) that partially overlaid the corner of my trench.

The students practice their troweling skills.

We live in various buildings interspersed throughout a huge former estate in the Mugello valley, just north of Florence.

My pad.

We eat dinner here, overlooking the Mugello valley.

My first trip to Italy was not notable for its food. At all. This time, however, the food situation is quite different. A lovely Italian lady named Beppina cooks for us each night and is wonderfully sensitive to the needs of newly-converted vegetarians (=me). Of course, on the weekends we must forage for ourselves:

Ariel of the Metropolitan Museum of Art enters the regionally famous Casa del Prosciutto.

The staff eats a gigantic three course lunch at the Casa del Prosciutto on Saturday (today).

Fortunately, the student house recently got the internet up and running, so I will be posting weekly. Stay tuned.