Author: Alessandro Sebastiani

The 2018 Field School at Monteverdi has just finished and we would like to thank all the people involved within the project:

Luca Giannuzzi Savelli, our Project Manager, owner of the land at Castellaraccio di Monteverdi and fabulous host

Paolo, Giovanna, Iacopo and Marina Giannuzzi Savelli, owners of the land at Podere Cannicci

Elisabeth, Joseph, Marc, Mason, Michael, Mike, Rebecca, Riley and Ryan, our fantastic students and tireless archaeologists

Alessandro and Edoardo, our site directors, whose expertise has been transmitted to the entire team

Fabiana, for her interest in the votive deposits

Massimo, for his expertise on pottery and passion for archaeology

Emma, our videomaker, for her enthusiasm and peculiar perspective on the excavations

Josef (Pepa), the technology guy with his drone and his skill of solving any kind of problems

Alex, Elena, and Mari, the anthropologists of the project

Carolina and Paolo Alberto, our youngest archaeologists

Fiorella, Noemi, and Valeria for wonderful meals and patience

Alberto, Cesare, and Patrizio, for their help with machines and pumps

Maurizio, for helping us with GPS points

Andrea Marcocci and the entire Associazione Archeologica Odysseus for the constant support

Last, but not the least, Candela and Sebastian, wonderful pet friends!

 

See you next year!

Sandro, Michelle, and Todd

The last two days at the castle have been spent in enlarging the excavation area towards the south, reaching wall 18 without digging any other context. We were able to expose another section of structure 16, while the other contexts were badly damaged by the roots of the trees that are very persistent in this part of the settlement. It took quite an amount of time indeed to free the area from the stumps.

At the end of today, the site was ready to be closed for the winter and for another archaeological season in 2019 which will probably see the opening the rest of the area.

This morning, we said our final goodbyes to Podere Cannicci. With the memories of the previous night–celebrating our beloved director Dr. Sebastiani’s birthday during lunch and then showcasing all of our hard work to the local people that evening under pink skies–still present in our minds, the IMPERO Team focused on understanding Context 54. Yesterday afternoon, we discovered that Context 54 had two different soil compositions, yellow clay with reddish-purple streaks bordering a very coarse sandy soil with integrations, and we speculated that the rougher soil may have been a cut.

Today we dug deeper and e evened out Context 54, discovering that our previous speculation was incorrect. The course, sandy texture is, in fact, consistent throughout the trench, and our final act on site was to trowel and brush the trench, walls, and surrounding area, and take our final context picture at Podere Cannicci. While part of our team at the Roman site did this, our videographer Emma continued her interviews, and three visitors from the  Soprintendenza investigated the nearby Roman cistern and performed Georadar analysis to aid our quest for the necropolis. As we wait for the results of the Georadar test, the IMPERO Team at Podere Cannicci is reminded that our work is far from over–there is a plethora of treasures, questions, and answers still in store, and we all look forward to an equally rewarding excavation season next year!

This morning heralded some more new visitors at Podere Cannicci! Dr. Sebastiani gave a tour to the Archaeological directors from the National Museum at Prague, supervisors over our very own team member Pepa, while the Podere Cannicci team continued to reveal our two new walls and new possible trench.  Moreover, Dr. Lisa Fentress and Dr. Mariagrazia Celuzza visited the site, helping to figure out new strategies and ideas for the project.

The team members working in the previously discovered extension of the trench uncovered Contexts 47, 51, and 53, all full of pottery and well-preserved teeth, today–reaching the water table inside the drain. In the afternoon, the other half of the Podere Cannicci team uncovered the new walls, Contexts 49 and 50, and revealed and measured two new contexts in between those walls, Contexts 48 and 52. Context 48 was a rougher, sandy, and inclusive context, and below it, Context 52 was a yellow clay with the possibility of a cut composed of the same material as a Context 48. Tomorrow morning, the Podere Cannicci team will set out to confirm and demarcate this possible cut. Another mystery we will grapple with tomorrow is the presence of rocks closing in either side of the potential drain. We must determine if the rocks are purposeful blockage, collapse, or evidence of another structure. Hopefully, these questions and more will be chipped at as we near the end of our excavation season!

Cool breeze, a wonderful discovery, and attentive listeners accompanied the first day of our final week of the season. In an attempt to better understand the interconnectivity of our different exposed contexts, we had our excavation machine open up a new area. To our surprise, two parallel walls within Context 36 were discovered perpendicular to the original trench. Although this raises further questions, we exposed and cleaned the top of the wall and evened out the area behind and in between, leaving us in a good position to continue our investigations. Within the proton of the trench itself that was exposed this season, Context 47, two of our archaeologists came upon several large pottery finds.

The excavation machine also began to open trial trenches with a small portion of the team at Podere Cannicci to find the necropolis. Our efforts did not prove fully fruitful, but we found several fragments of tile that may help direct the course of our searching. After lunch, we welcomed our friends from the Populonia excavation site after their hospitality towards us at the end of our second week, and we showed them all of our hard work. The IMPERO Team cannot wait to see what our fourth week will deliver us!

Today we cleaned everything at our best to prepare the site for the photogrammetry. At the same time, we reached some conclusions on the excavated area. We are probably in front of two different phases of the Castle, the latest one composed by the visible structures, with few traces of a floor in the north-west corner and under a “step” in wall 5.

The oldest one is composed of the new structure 16 and by the reddish layer 13 but we will need to enlarge the excavation area to understand it properly since we have very few finds for the moment.

Yesterday we had some heavy rain which prevented us to work for all the day and flooded Cannicci. Fortunately, the castle was in much better condition, after half an hour of maintenance we were able to come back to work.

The task of the day was to completely expose and document layer 13 and the cut (14) which we found today after an accurate trowel cleaning. Another structure is emerging under the wall 4 so we draw a plan of all these contexts. In the meantime, we begin to clear the southern wall, which was still badly covered by rubble and vegetation.

The IMPERO Team at Podere Cannicci had their hands full today dealing with the aftermath of yesterday’s storm. After a day off from excavation, we returned to a flooded site and immediately set to work passing buckets to drain the water from the area. Both students and directors laughed together despite the circumstances, and our efforts successfully cleared the water from a segment of the site—allowing us to discover the new Context 45. Context 45 will prove interesting tomorrow, as the bright red clay shares the space with contained, dark-brown soil that might be cuts. As for the rest of the excavation area, the Podere Cannicci team diligently resurfaced a continuation of the trench, buried in organic matter, which was a part of the previous archaeological work done in the 1980s. We hope to better intertwine our research with that of the original excavation team as our investigations carry into the future. Continuing this spirit of teamwork, in the afternoon, Luca and Alberto graciously lent the service of a tractor and water pump to remove the rest of the flooding. Although there is still much to do to clean up our site, we managed to push back against the inconvenience of yesterday’s severe rain to continue to make progress.

 

The drone was on site today flying above the wooded hill of Castellaraccio and capturing some great pictures of the landscape.

On the ground, the team was still busy in Area 1 where we cleaned, documented and removed the collapse of the roof (11), beginning to uncover a dark layer, maybe the result of a fire who could have caused the destruction of the building, or some traces of an activity related with fire? Only further excavation will give us the answers.

Today we spent the entire morning cleaning the excavation area to allow Josef flying his drone and realize the orthophoto.

The team then concentrated in starting the removal of the fillings of the drain in the external part of the settlement, discovering that at least the second level was rich in slag. It seems clearer and clearer that this part of the site was involved in metal-working activities and also in the production of pottery, as a number of wastes confirm.

During the afternoon we started the extensive cleaning of the 1989-1990 excavation area so to be able to produce a final plan and merge the structures from the two different research projects.