Rained Out: Montereggie and Pietramarina

The second day, and the first day of digging dawned bright....and soggy. Montelupo was wracked with severe storms through the night that flooded much of the site so the plans for the day were amended to include a morning hiking to and seeing the most influential sites around Montelupo, both Etruscan civilizations featured in the archeological museum and worked on by members of ICHNOS.

As mentioned before, Etruscans like hills. It gives them agricultural space while being entirely defensible. It's one of the ways we differentiate sites between the Etruscans and the Romans who preferred sprawling residences on flat ground. This reality made the morning a study in physical exertion as we marched up hills to reach these sites. Downside? Sweat. Bright side? Incredible views.

 The first site we went to was Montereggie, located on a hill just north of town, overlooking Montelupo and her sister city Empoli. Our ICHNOS director worked on the site for a few seasons, and it is still being excavated. It has a fascinating array of walls, but more importantly, it has three wells and a cistern where a human skeleton was discovered. You already know why wells and cisterns are important so let's jump right to the elephant in the room. A human body.

It has since been removed so we were unable to view it but some work on the bones reveals that it was a young male who was presumably bound hand and foot and tossed into the well. His body was crouched like he had been huddling but severe damage to his cranium has led done to believe he was either killed and then tossed or tossed in alive and consequently hurt his head. There is plenty of proof for both interpretations but more than anything, Etruscan life is still clouded with Mystery and we know too little about them to make reasonable conclusions about some of our findings.

The next site was fortezza etrusca di Pietramarina. If Montereggie was a hike, this was a trek. Completely worth the burning thighs however, because the site offered views of the sea, the Tuscan valley, and the Apennine mountains depending on which way you look.

The site itself in extremely fascinating as well, and has led to some very conclusive ground work on Etruscan building habits and motivations.

With several imposing walls, the most entrancing aspect of Pietramarina was the ruins of a wall that once surrounded the entirety of the civilization and hill top, making it approximately 6 miles long of hand laid stone wall with stones hiked up from the bottom. Having walked the hill with just a water bottle to weigh me down, the reality of such a feat was a little jarring to say the least.

The morning was warm and allowed to site to dry out enough for us to begin work so, after lunch, we packed-up and headed out to the Villa Romana to begin working.

Unlike romantic notions of archeology, the first day involved rakes and brooms rather than shovels, trawled, pick axes, and dirt. The first step of any seasons start is cleaning the site up for pictures and for various important visitors who will come by to witness the excavations first hand.

Our first step was cleaning the ruins that had already been uncovered, carefully removing the hay, dirt, and grass that had accumulated over the last ten years for fresh photos.

It took most of the day. After clearing the previously dug sections of the site, we moved on to the locations we would be digging for the next five weeks which started from the very beginning which means marking out and recording the initial site in out computing and mapping program, GIS. Then cleaning the site for initial photos involved scraping the surface soil about two centimeters deep so that all of the features can be clearly seen. First, we put neon line around the perimeter of our trench. Then we raked and swept, cleaning out the majority of the debris that was accumulated on the surface of the sites. After that, we dug.

At 3, we closed-up shop a little early in order to attend a special tour of Montelupo's Archeological Museum by the Museum's director, and the big name in Montelupo Archeology. 

Since he didn't speak any English at all, our friends at ICHNOS kindly translated his explanations of the museum's cases and our questions as we moved through it. 

The museum is of particular interest because it is alone among its fellows for consisting almost exclusively of finds from archeological digs rather than from the donations from private collections. It means that the displays aren't nearly as pretty but infinitely more fascinating. More can be extrapolated from these because mistakes, accidents, and ruined pieces that were prematurely disposed of tells much more about the process and the lives of the potters than a piece that is successfully completed and goes on to be purchased without comment. 

The museum is arrayed temporally with the earliest pieces seen first and the progression clearly articulated through the progression of rooms. Most interesting is the notable development of skills and quality of productions. As you move through, finer clays and developed, and the painting is increasingly intricate. Additionally, color glazes are added as potters discover new colors and styles develop as the artists are inspired by the patterns they begin to receive through trade.

Almost 60% of the collection actually comes from one source, a well in Montelupo, about 30 yards from the front door of the Villa we are staying at. It is 80 meters deep and has worked as the cities trash can for centuries (now you understand why we archeologists like them so much). It was initially the water source for the castle and the Captain's residence but fell into disuse and became a convenient hole on the way up the hill. finds from the well span late Roman conquest into the beginning of the Renaissance, some 800 years of ceramic production protected in a small, innocuous well of the street. The entry room to the museum features a replica of the well and it's story to share with visitors. It serves as a reminder of just how ancient Italy is, and how the present is really a blend of the past with so many ancient qualities lurking in the innocuous everyday habits of the Italians and reminds us not to take such a special relationship with the past for granted. 

 The gem of the museum is a completed bowl found in Cuba from one of the most famous Montelupan ceramists. Incredibly decadent, it represents the height of production and distribution with intricate, freehand, hard painted decoration and the full array of glaze colors. It is one of the few pieces taken from a private collection but works as a wonderful example of the sort of truly magnificent work that was being produced here.

After the museum, we walked back to Ivana's, exhausted from our first full day in the Dirt.