I am one of the two last Americans standing in Vescovado di Murlo today, and tomorrow we will be no more. While the last few days of each season are horrible in the sense of needing to clean up the evidence of seven weeks of dirty excavation people, read: cleaning fridges that should be burned, throwing away stuff people left behind, bringing the tools down from the site, and shutting down/covering the storerooms. The fun part is that the people who stay until the end are the best possible people to make these tasks less....nasty and terrifying? In addition to dry-heaving [View Full Entry]

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Apologies for the lack of updates, but the drive toward the end of the season is always a crazy one. Epic beach trip to Castiglione della Pescaia happened, and even though it was gorgeous, the only picture I took was of my excellent seafood pizza. Shows where my priorities have turned as of late. There was a return trip to Massa Marittima and a successful entrance into the OPEN archaeological museum. The museum was a total waste of time, however. The whole thing smelled like a bathroom, and there was actually a display on spelunking (spelling?) complete with dummies hanging from [View Full Entry]

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A weekend of epic length (we got Monday off) of course gave ample opportunity to do epic things. And epic things I've done. Saturday was a trip to Chiusi to view me some urns (which I hope to focus upon for my dissertation), and the trip started off right with a nice bout of carsickness on twisty Italian roads. The museum was great, but we ended up having to pay full entry price (even though some of us are students), the lighting was not so great, and they didn't have a ton on view. Nevertheless, the things they had out were [View Full Entry]

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Apologies for the lack of blogging, but work has been plenty and sleeping is consuming the majority of my free time. Anyway, this past weekend involved a journey north to see my first real opera, a performance of the Barber of Seville in Verona's Roman Theater. Best possible way to be introduced to opera. The adventure started off right with a stop at the Autogrill near Bologna for lunch. There are many Autogrills in Italy, but the one near Bologna is actually a huge bridge over the entire A1 that runs Rome-Milan. Inside said bridge are three floors of glory: a [View Full Entry]

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Greetings all! Big week at Scavi! We've had serious rain problems nearly the entire time we've been here, and all the trenches in the main excavation area have been absolutely flooded, as in 60 cm of standing water. Bucket brigades have helped, but it's been taking way too much time, only to be thwarted the next day by more rain. In comes the motopompa. Our architect went to an interesting (read: scary) industrial supply store and conducted a transaction without much Italian on his part and no English on the store's part. He purchased a gas-powered siphon, we tested it in [View Full Entry]

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Greetings from Vescovado. Today is Palio day (the crazy awesome horserace in Siena), and I opted to stay in Vescovado, watch the race on TV from the commy bar, then go to dinner in the next town over after the race. We've had a few torrential rainstorms the past week or so, along with an epic one last night, so much of excavation has consisted of bailing the trenches out from all the rain water. Digging through mud = not fun. Short entry this time, but it's to share a very important link. Our photographer, Tom Lingner, is putting photos of [View Full Entry]

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Ciao a tutti! We've just finished our first week of work for the 2009 season, and the weather has totally thrown everything for a loop. We've had relatively cold temperatures, plus plenty of rain, thereby turning the entire site into a huge mud pit, punctuated with large holes full of standing water. It's slow-going with heavy clumps of dirt to lift, tools getting coated, and shoes caking and sticking in the mud. My storerooms are a bit different from where I worked in 2007. We use a garage up near the museum that is owned by the Commune of Murlo. We [View Full Entry]

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Greetings from Florence! Mom and I are having a blast during our whirlwind tour of Italy. So far we had three days in Rome, one in Assisi, and now we're in Florence. Day 1 in Rome included the Colosseum, the Forum, the Palatine Hill, the other Imperial Fora, and the Circus Maximus. I was super confused and probably scared my mom by being utterly incapable of finding an entrance to the Forum. Yeah...last time I was there you totally did not have to pay to get in. Now you do. And that's lame. Day 2 in Rome was a Vatican extravaganza. [View Full Entry]

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I'm at T minus four days to blast off on yet another Etruscan adventure (now my seventh), but this time will be very, very different. And by different, I mean way more awesomer. Mom retired and I'm taking her to Italy on her first trip there so she can say hey to the Pope and see the funny things her crazy daughter likes to do, like dig large holes in the ground and write about broken pottery. Our itinerary will begin with a few days to explore Rome, a quick jaunt to Assisi, another quick jaunt to Florence, then some quality [View Full Entry]

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I am currently in Beijing until tomorrow morning when I will fly back to the states, and I'm missing the people from my project already. I was extremely fortunate to participate in an amazing project with a hilarious, caring, diverse group of people. We were American, Chinese, German, British, Italian, South African, and Taiwanese, and somehow we could all make this work. One of the members of our team is a geophysicist, and he performed magnetometer surveys in the areas near an ancient walled site. The magnetometer measures differences in the magnetism of the earth, so it works particul [View Full Entry]

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