The end of the week has come, but everyone is happy to have another working day at Castellaraccio di Monteverdi. Like the teams’ usual mornings, everyone worked extremely hard to achieve the final goal: to uncover the entire castle and to find amazing artifacts in the process. Three medieval coins have been found yesterday, so everyone is more than willing to get hands-deep in the dirt to find more! Within Area 1000, there is more to find in context 10, which is characterized by loose, dark brown soil.
The team continued to work on their individual projects so that more information could be learned about the site. This medieval castle is beautiful to excavate, and while there have only been a couple of small finds throughout the week, everyone is still so eager to dig deeper; however, today was a relatively normal day. Everyone pickaxed, expelled heavy rocks, and shoveled a lot of loose dirt; although, during that time, Grant found multiple bricks and roof tiles through his amazing pickaxing skills. In addition, Alessandro found a artifact made out of metal. Everyone is super excited to perform further analysis on it in the future.
In addition to our excavation, everyone received training regarding total station from Alessandro. Total station tracks the points of a site in order for maps to be created because it makes the whole archaeological process much easier. Marc also gave the rest of the team a very informational overview of the site that he has been working on: essentially, the house has a type of room identified outside called a trash midden due to the random artifacts that have been found there. It usually ranges from pottery and faunal remains, but Marc found both a glass base and spindle whorl fragment in one day! Everyone hopes to find more goods within that trench. On Monday, Area 1000 of Castellaraccio will continue to herald context 10 until we uncover more of the wall; we are hoping to acquire more artifacts (specifically coins) in the process!
Interconnected Mobility of People and Economy along the River Ombrone 