2005 STUDENT DIARIES Stephanie Brown, Southern Methodist University Jess Dussling, University of Illinois Jennifer Isham, Franklin and Marshall College Fred Martino, Franklin and Marshall College Kathleen Rickards, Franklin and Marshall College Angela Trentacoste, University of Virginia Candace Vaden, University of Illinois Stephanie Brown, Weeks 1-4: A year ago if anyone had told me that I would be covered in dirt in the middle of Tuscany, I would have laughed it off. But in fact, I have regressed to my childhood, playing in the dirt from morning to night. This isn't just any dirt. It is dirt in the mountains of the Mugello Valley, dirt that holds years and years of history. The students here spend their days on these mountains obtaining information on the Etruscans, hoping to eventually come up with a concrete idea of what exactly happened to them. Stephanie Brown in the Podere Funghi during Week 4. There are two separate excavation sites, Poggio Colla and Podere del Funghi, also known as the Field of Dreams. Poggio Colla holds most of the students where they are under the close watch of four trench supervisors and three assistants, while the Field of Dreams holds only a handful of students, one trench supervisor, and an assistant. The first week of excavation was a get-to-know-each-other week. We were assigned to groups of four students and each day we would rotate from trench to trench, removing dirt that covered the Etruscan artifacts. During this week, we got to know our peers as well as our supervisors and their assistants. Although this initial week was very labor intensive, it set us up for the weeks to come. At the end of the week, we were all feeling very accomplished with what we had uncovered. Stephanie Brown taking a pass in her trench in the Podere Funghi. After that first week, I was placed among the handful of students down at the FOD, short for "Field of Dreams." The FOD is an area secluded from the rest of the trenches on a much smaller hill than Poggio Colla. This year the FOD has been attempting to come to a close. However, recently, we have found a new linear structure that some may consider the start of a new wall leading into an unexcavated area. The trench supervisor, Katy Blanchard, has placed me near this new wall and given me the task of trying to define it as best I can. Because I am working there, I find this very exciting. The idea of someone inhabiting an area hundreds of years ago and us finding their place of work or inhabitance years later completely boggles my mind. I am very excited to be a part of something so important to the study of different cultures. Stephanie Brown (with Kathleen Rickards) shows the bucchero join she found cleaning pottery for the conservation lab. I initially came to the site strictly for the course work. As an art history major, I found this summer program very beneficial to my degree plan but after being here for a couple of weeks I have realized that this program is valuable in more ways than one. Being a part of something like this has opened my eyes to new opportunities, new subjects of study, and new fields of employment. I am interested to see what the coming weeks will bring here in the Mugello Valley. Jess Dussling, Weeks 1 - 4: As a student at the University of Illinois, this program came to my attention through a more round-about way than those people who attend affiliated universities. I have always been interested in archaeology and have never traveled to Europe so I asked one of my professors in the classics department what field school could give me a comprehensive archaeological education. His immediate response was the Mugello Valley field school in Vicchio. He told me that due to its length of 7 weeks, its complementary lectures every night, and the attentive and knowledgeable staff, that this program would be by far the best place for me to learn about excavation. After that, I never looked back. I only applied to this program and as soon as I got accepted, I bought a plane ticket to Italy. Jess Dussling in Trench PC 23 during Week 4. After I got here, the learning process started very quickly. We met with all of the instructors and trench supervisors and got to visit the site to get an overview of how the site works. For the first week, we got to try out all of the trenches and experience all the different types of areas that we could potentially excavate in. During lecture, we learned about the history of the Etruscans and why our excavation is so crucial. The fact that we are studying the Etruscans is amazing because there are very few sites that can be excavated because most Etruscan cities have been built over. Every person who is here is very interested and excited about the work and the prospect of discovering something, as well as learning from the experience. Heather Neale and Jess Dussling (right) excavating between hearth and altar in PC 23. After the first week, we were assigned to a trench and that is where we excavate for the rest of the season. I am in Trench PC 23 and Trench PC 15 which are supervised Robert Vander Poppen, affectionately nicknamed "VP" or "V-Pizzle" if you are from the Midwest. We wake up every weekday morning at 6 a.m., which actually is not as painful as one might think, and we are out at the site by 7:15 a.m. Excavating is a new sensation that is very hard to describe because it is a sense of importance I have never had before regarding my education. It's a strange feeling to get to handle objects that are so old and could possibly change the course of Etruscan history as we know it. Using the trowel for the first time is an adventure in itself as well. Due to the fact that all the artifacts are fragile, we have to make sure that while "making a pass" which just means digging in a new stratum of dirt, that we do not break any objects. This gets easier with time and patience, an archeology student's best friend. Whenever we dig up a "find", which equates to something noteworthy such as a piece of pottery with a feature (such as a rim) or metal, we have to make a find tag and triangulate where that piece was found. To accomplish this, the wise Jess Galloway (not partial just because he has the same name as me) uses a devise that utilizes a laser and calculates where the find is and stores this information in a computer to be used later. We dig every day until 3:30 p.m. and then head on down the hill. Once all we get back to our villa, there is a daily ritual called "pottery washing" which is quite self-explanatory. All of the pottery that we find that day must be washed so that the conservators can analyze the material. Being able to see what other people in the trench have discovered that day gives a very comprehensive view of the Etruscan activity in that certain area. With the ever so knowledgeable VP explaining the different forms of pottery and his interpretations, all of the people in our trench come away from the day feeling well-informed. 2005: Jess Galloway and Jess Dussling. This is how the school has progressed so far for me. I have enjoyed myself thoroughly and I am so glad that I got this experience. I feel like this is definitely the type of job I would love to do. Fred Martino, Weeks 1 - 4: I've finished my fourth week at the field school here in the Mugello Valley, and I am having a great time. We arrived in Vicchio on Saturday June 18th. Waiting for us was a big pizza dinner at the house of Podere del Vigna, at which the staff and students introduced themselves. Sunday morning we drove up to Poggio Colla and had orientation for the site. The trench supervisors explained the history of their trenches and what plans they had for the season ahead. Once orientation had concluded, it was time to finish the cleanup of the site that the staff had begun earlier in the morning. I was assigned the job of clearing brush with a machete to make a path from the main trail and quickly earned myself the nickname "Freddy Machete". Fred Martino writing in his field manual next to Trenches PF 15 and PF 17. Monday was the start of a week of taking out the backfill from the trenches. We rotated throughout all five trenches over the week with shovels, buckets, and wheelbarrows, digging up tons of dirt and unloading it into huge dirt mounds up to ten feet in height. It was a good chance for everyone to bond. You can't get much closer to a stranger than being hot, sweaty, covered in dirt, and digging next to them all week. After the week was over everyone was much closer and sorer than they had been at the beginning of the week. Over the weekend we had a chance to do some traveling and rest up for week two. The second week we received our trench assignments and began our archaeological work. I was assigned to the Podere del Funghi, which is also known as the FOD (Field Of Dreams) because it was once a cornfield. The FOD is actually separate and different from Poggio Colla, however, the two are related. Pottery found at Poggio Colla can be traced to that found in the FOD. Also in previous years a midden (pottery dump) and six kilns (pottery furnaces) have been discovered, which leads us to believe that it was a pottery production site. When I found out that I would be working in the FOD I was initially disappointed. I knew that I would be working with only a few people and that due to the lack of trees in the middle of a cornfield there is no shade in the trench from 7:30 am on. I was pleasantly surprised, however, when I found out that I would be working with a fun group of people and that occasionally on lucky days we get a cloud or two. The Fodders, which we've nicknamed ourselves, are the trench supervisor Katy Blanchard, her assistant Aaron Bartels, Stephanie Brown (SMU), Kathleen Rickards (F&M), Chelsea Stonerock (Rollins), and myself (F&M). So with trowels and handpicks we got started on opening two more 2.5 X 2.5 meter loci (sections of a trench). The FOD is a good place for learning the skills of excavation because the top fifty centimeters of soil is plow zone, the soil that has been turned over year after year during its former life as a cornfield. This means that all artifacts we find are "out of context" and thus can't contribute to mapping the broader picture of the FOD's history. Once we had made our way through the plow zone, the other half of what is called a heat related anomaly (what we call the HRA) was revealed. The HRA is an area of soil, which had been affected by some source of heat hot enough to change the color of the soil to black and red. My first individual assignment in the trench was to define this soil by clearing the normal soil from above it without removing any of the HRA. I finished this by the end of the week and the soil turned out to be in the shape of a circle. We speculated that it could be a kiln footprint, the remainders of an area where a kiln once existed. On the second weekend Professor Rob Sternberg, with whom I did my research project, arrived in Vicchio. Professor Sternberg is part of the Earth and Environment department at Franklin & Marshall College. When I had heard about the Poggio Colla Field School I realized it would be the perfect opportunity to use my Marshall research grant. I asked Dean Ann Steiner if she knew about a project that I could work on. She told me that Professor Sternberg planned to do geophysics research at the site and that I could work with him. Katy Blanchard and Fred Martino geoprospecting in the Podere Funghi. The first part of the project was magnetic susceptibility research. A magnetic susceptibility meter measures how susceptible a material is to being magnetized. Monday morning of the third week we went up to Poggio Colla to trenches PC 23 and PC 20. There we took readings of the stratigraphic layers. We found that areas with sterile soil and sandstone had very low readings, but layers that have more activity, i.e. the destruction layer, had much higher readings. Professor Sternberg explained that this is a result of the burning that occurred during the destruction and leveling that occurred at the site. The high levels of heat actually increased the magnetic susceptibility of the material. After lunch we walked to the FOD and took some readings on the soil around the heat related anomaly. The results were higher than any other soil we had sampled. We then decided that it would be useful to map out the exact location of the heat related anomaly. We set up a grid of ten-centimeter intervals over the anomaly and recorded the results in my notebook. Professor Sternberg charted the data in a 3D model, which provided a clear representation of the shape of the anomaly. The remainder of the week was spent doing a magnetic survey of a 20 X 25 meter grid west of the trench I had been working in. We used a proton procession magnetometer, which measures the Earth's exact magnetic field wherever the sensor is placed. Professor Sternberg and I rotated between holding the sensor and CPU, taking readings every half-meter. Once I was sufficiently capable of operating the equipment Professor Sternberg was able to go take soil samples, leaving me to some more surveying in other areas with someone from my trench to assist me. On Friday of that week Professor Sternberg and I went to the computer lab where he taught me how to upload and analyze the data collected. A brief crash course left me with enough confidence to do it again on my own, which allowed Professor Sternberg to leave behind the magnetometer and his computer for further research to be done at the FOD. This last week, the fourth week, I was back in the trench. We opened up two more loci, revealing the corner of the wall of the building we are working around and an area of stone, which appears to be a terrace. In the upcoming week, we plan on taking the whole trench down to the level of the bottom of the wall. Above and below: Fred Martino holds a bucchero sherd he cleaned to find an inscription. I've been having a great time here and I'm already planning on coming back to Italy for study abroad next year. Traveling with my friends is so much fun. We've traveled to Florence, Venice, and Cinque Terre and plan on going to Verona and Rome. I'm looking forward to the good times we'll be having the rest of the season.   Angela Trentacoste, Weeks 1 - 4: It's a little over half-way through the season, and it's been a bit of an adventure thus far. I flew from Washington D.C. to Rome in time to meet the bus to the site on the morning of Saturday June 18th. The ride was long and hot, giving all of us an introduction to the sunny Tuscan heat. We spent the rest of the first weekend becoming oriented with the site and our new surroundings. Most students are here at Podere della Vigna, a beautiful farmhouse we share with Bruno and Bepina, our cooks and caretakers. We eat our home-cooked dinners overlooking the vineyards behind the house. The remainder of the students and the staff are on the other side of the valley, just a short walk through the vineyard and a hay field. The view there is no less impressive. Angela Trentacoste in Trench PC 20 during Week 4. Our introductory weekend also included a walking tour of the site and a general introduction to the project. We rode in vans the majority of the way to the site and trekked the last bit. The hilltop itself is fairly small and wooded, with steep drop-offs. At this point the site looked like an unnatural clearing with tarps sticking out of the ground and a small shed. However, we could follow the tarps' edges to see where the trenches were, and this first hand experience combined with an introductory lecture with plans gave me a much better understanding as to where structures were located. I would recommend that anyone participating in the dig read the associated articles and the field manual; ideas about the site change every day and it is beneficial to have a solid understanding of the inhabitation of Poggio Colla before one starts digging through it. Monday morning we awoke bright and early and started all the preparations for this year's excavation. First on the list was to un-backfill the trenches. At the end of the season the trenches are lined in mesh, and the dirt is backfilled to protect the excavated area. So, with shovels and buckets, we all went to work. And though it's hot and sunny, it is not humid here at all, definitely a nice change of pace from my summers in Virginia. Throughout the week we rotated which trench we worked in. This made me more familiar with the site as a whole and how the trenches related to each other and the overall excavation. All the trench supervisors were more than happy to explain the goals of their trench (and why it was better than anyone else's). By the end of first week, we had finished un-backfilling, scarping, sweeping and had begun excavating in many of the trenches (except maybe PC23, which often seemed comparable in size to the house at Vigna). In the afternoons we had some time to unwind before lectures. Topics for the first week were introductions to the site, stratigraphy and how to set up our trench notebooks. It was interesting to learn what the walls, foundations, and black dirt we had begun to encounter meant, and how the position of different strata was used to relatively date structures on the hill or identify post-holes. Many of us spent the weekend in Florence or nursing our new sunburns and relaxing. Monday we received our trench assignments in which we would be excavating for the rest of the summer. Trench assignment proved to be rather random because each student has a lab project that they are working on for which they stay down one day a week. Thus students in the same group were placed in different trenches so no trench would lose more than one person in a day. I'm in PC 20, supervised by Ivo van der Graaff with help from Ben Luley. Ivo, who has a very impressive amount of excavation experience, and Ben, who was a student last year, are so helpful with all of our questions and make a great (and sometimes entertaining) team. The trench is divided into 6 loci which contain a little of everything. There are walls, at least one buttress, Phase I blocks and a midden. We spent the majority of the second week digging in locus 6 through the incredibly black soil of a destruction layer (which is never going to come out of my socks) and the bottom of locus 4, which, judging by the large number of fairly complete animals bones, seems to be a midden. Not too long after we started excavation in locus 7, which was more difficult to work in at first because Stratum 2 and 3 are very similar in color. Luckily, with Ivo and Ben's help it did not take too long to discern between the two. Excavation itself is a fairly simple process. We move across the locus at a depth from 10 - 15 cm putting the soil in buckets and sifting it to find any artifacts that were missed. When more delicate items like pottery and bronze come up in the ground, we use dental tools to define around them in order to lift them without breaking. We try to get the better way through a pass in a locus in a day, though it is difficult trying to move fast and not break anything. But, like with any new skill I feel that I get better at it all the time. In just a few weeks I am better at spotting small sherds in the sifter or noticing the tiny edge of something still in the ground. Angela Trentacoste holds a find in Trench PC 20 during Week 5. The amount of artifacts that come out of PC 20 is quite impressive. We find the everyday coarseware pottery and the nicer fineware and impasto pieces as well. The most beautiful is the blue-black bucchero pottery which is occasionally incised or stamped with a pattern like griffins. There also is black-glaze pottery with bits of the glaze still on it. We have a number of "bronze lumps", a bronze boss, iron nails, and what looks like an iron barbecue foot. After excavation, we have pottery washing and sorting. Pottery from passes finished that day is washed in mineral-free water and laid out to dry at Vigna. Pottery from the previous day is sorted according to what part of the vessel it is and counted, recorded, weighed and bagged. Tile is recorded in liters, and if it is not diagnostic is taken back up the hill to be put in the tile dump. Students also have individual projects that they stay down to work on one day each week. I'm working on paleobotany with Lynn Makowski from the University of Pennsylvania. We'll be identifying and analyzing the ancient botanical remains from the site. To do this we will be floating soil samples in a big barrel full of water in order to separate plant matter from the soil. Lynn just arrived recently, so we sorted through the terrifyingly musky museum basement to bring back all the organic samples and inventory them. Hopefully we'll begin floating on Tuesday after we develop an inventory of the samples we have. The evening lectures are enjoyable and very informative. They can center on broad topics such as stratigraphy and what can be learned from it, with our site used as an example. The lectures are reinforced by our hands-on experience on the hill. One night we may talk about strata and foundations walls, and the next we will be digging through one. Other lecture topics include the archaeology of Etruria across Italy, which is useful for relating our site to the larger settlement scheme. Visiting lecturers are often my favorite. Annie Hooton, the illustrator, gave a lecture on ceramic illustration which, as an Art major, I found very interesting. In addition, we all tried drawing our own sherds. Rob Sternberg gave a fascinating lecture on geophysics and archaeology, and how the magnetic imprint in things like kilns could be used in their dating. It is refreshing to experience and share in the points of view of a number of scholars from different universities and their ideas about Poggio Colla. And they are certainly not afraid to express their sometimes diverse conceptions about the site.   Jennifer Isham, Weeks 5 - 7: As the 2005 excavation season draws to a close, the enormity of what I have learned and experienced this summer is beginning to dawn on me. I feel that I have come an extremely long way in a very short amount of time. Just a few months ago, during my first semester at Franklin and Marshall College, I picked up an application for the field school and from that moment, everything else fell into place. Within a week of submitting my application, I was accepted and preparations for my trip were well underway. Upon my arrival, I immediately took a liking to the other students, the staff, and Italy itself. Jen Isham and Josh Moran excavating a pithos in Trench PC 26 in Week 4. During the first week of excavation, I was so thrilled to be learning something new that I did not notice the dirt clinging to my clothing and skin or the muscle soreness that comes from shoveling dirt for hours on end. At the beginning of the second week, I was assigned to Trench PC26. Excavation went smoothly for my trenchmates and my supervisor. I, on the other hand, do not have the "magic trowel" that some people seem to possess - those few lucky people who seem to have artifacts gravitating towards their hands and who cannot go five minutes without making a discovery. During the first 3 or 4 weeks of the program, everyone around me was pulling up pieces of bronze, iron nails, animal bones and pottery and all I found were pieces of burnt mudbrick and tile (which are plentiful on Poggio Colla). Disappointment set in. Eventually, I realized that this was my first real lesson in archaeology: sometimes the soil is empty of artifacts and regardless of how patient or hardworking you are, you still will not find anything. Despite my dismay at learning this lesson, I waited patiently for the day when I would have my first find. Towards the end of the 4th week, I found an incised fineware base. When I recorded my find that afternoon, I finally felt like a real archaeologist. Jennifer Isham, standing, contemplates progress in Trench PC 26. My experience working on my research project was a far cry from my experience excavating. Professor Ann Steiner, Director of Research for the program and head of the Classics department at Franklin and Marshall College, lead my research group. Our assignment was to measure and calculate the volume of all the bowls we have found on the FOD (Podere Funghi) and the hill (Poggio Colla). Once we had calculated all of the volumes, we compared our results to research done at Marzabotto and a few other Etruscan sites. We even took a trip to Marzabotto to look at the pottery we had researched. Overall, I found the research aspect of the field school to be a very fulfilling experience. My entire research group attacked the assignment with such ferocity and determination that what we accomplished was far more than what was expected of us. Prof. Ann Steiner with the ceramics study group: Jennifer Isham, Abby Greenbaum, Kathleen Rickards, and Steven Colon. This summer has changed me. I no longer have difficulty telling the difference between a smooth piece of rock and a pottery sherd (its harder than you think) or identifying soil changes. My trowel no longer feels awkward in my hand and I've shed the "I'm afraid to move my trowel because I'm deathly afraid of breaking something valuable" attitude that many of us had when we arrived here. Aside from being well on my way to becoming an archaeologist, I've also learned lessons that are far more encompassing (please excuse my sentimentality); I am now more patient and more independent than I was when I arrived. This has been an exceedingly enriching experience that has, by far, surpassed my expectations. I will never forget the friends I've made or the experiences I've had, and for that, I'm so thankful. Kathleen Rickards, Weeks 5 - 7: The excavation has officially come to a close, and next week we will backfill all the trenches. This summer has definitely been amazing, so different from anything I've every experienced. As a Classical Archaeology & Ancient History major at Franklin & Marshall College, I knew I wanted to participate in this program, but it turned out to be very different than what I expected, in a positive way. Kathleen Rickards sifting for finds from her trench in the Podere Funghi. I was assigned to work in the Podere Funghi, an area about 500 meters below the main excavation site of Poggio Colla. We started the season by opening Trench PF 15 and half of Trench PF 5, which contain a main wall from an ancient structure. One of the goals for the season was to find the extent of the wall and to come to a conclusion on what type of structure it was. We have succeeded in doing so, but as with most research, we are left with a new set of questions. When we opened the trench, the part of the wall that was already excavated extended toward the southwest and then turned at a 100-degree angle toward the southeast. At that point it came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the trench. However, we did find a pile of rocks not far away, which led us to believe that the wall continued to that point, and that the section missing was lost when the site was destroyed. So we opened a new trench (PF 17) to the south of PF 15 to explore this. We found that in the area where we thought the wall ended, there is a terrace, made entirely of sandstone that extends toward the southwest. So we know that our wall did not simply end, but rather it turned, but then we still had the other rock pile that we thought connected to it. Therefore, we opened a new trench (PF 18) on the northeast corner of PF 15 to see if maybe those rocks were part of a new wall extending northeast. Since we found no evidence of this in PF 18, we concluded that the pile of rocks was simply rock spill from the main wall during its destruction. Kathleen Rickards (left) and Aaron Bartels opening Trench PF 17. In Trench PF 15 we defined the shape of what we called the "heat related anomaly," which we knew was most likely a kiln, but before we knew for certain, we gave it a vague descriptive name, just in case. For if we considered it a kiln prematurely, then everything we found around it would have been thought of in a different context, which would have been disastrous if we turned out to be wrong. Anyway, we defined the shape, which interestingly turned out to be the shape of a baseball diamond, and it was much larger than the other kilns found in the Podere Funghi. This led us to believe that the structure was a workshop. Previously, there had been talk about the Podere Funghi being a residential area with several household kilns, but this one was too large and by the color of the soil, we knew that the temperature of the kiln had to be much greater than those reached in a household kiln. Around the kiln we found "circular carbon features," which were postholes, and we came to the conclusion that they supported a rack for cooling the pieces (of either tile or pottery) that had been fired. So that was really all we found this year in the Podere Funghi. It was its last year of excavation. Even though we did not find much that we could pull out of the ground and bring back to the lab to show everyone, we still found out a lot of information about the Podere Funghi's relationship to Poggio Colla. So one of the most important lessons I've learned about archaeology this year, quoting my trench supervisor, is "It's not what you find; it's what you find out!" Kathleen Rickards in the Podere Funghi. Angela Trentacoste, Weeks 5 -7: The second half of the program absolutely flew by as we became more focused on our trenches' goals for the summer and more familiar with the chronology and identity of the material and architecture with which we are working. Compared to just a few weeks ago, I am more aware of the significance of the material I excavate and how it fits into the larger picture of the site. I think that this better awareness makes excavating more exciting despite this week's insane temperature increase. It also certainly didn't hurt that a number of exciting things began to show themselves in the later weeks. As we continued excavating in PC 20's various loci, most of the material from each stratum was what we expected. At the very bottom is the natural soil of the hill and bedrock. The very earliest layer contained soil mixed with an ample amount of bone and early fine and coarse pottery. The stratum above this in some places is very black and was used to create a level surface. It is full of beautiful fine black bucchero pottery, occasionally stamped or incised in someway. Over this is a Hellenistic layer marked by its black glaze pottery. On top of that is post-destruction deposition and more modern soils. Though we have an idea as to the identity of each stratum, there are still many questions about the order that the walls and blocks were placed in the trench. As the season progressed, many of these questions have remained unanswered, and more have developed. The seemingly unending number of questions to which we have no exact answer is sometimes daunting, but there is always a plan for how to solve them. Angela Trentacoste (front left), Hilary Cornell, and Chelsea Kuiper in Trench PC 20. As I began to form the conclusion to my trench notebook, I became worried about my incomplete understanding of the exact sequence of walls and blocks in the trench. However, these gaps did not result from any fault of mine, but that no one knows exactly what the Etruscan's were doing on the arx. This is one of the most fun and frustrating parts of the excavation experience, and one of the biggest divisions between field school and regular school. Nothing here is set in concrete. Some things you find out over the summer, some things you may find out later, but it seems there's a lot we'll never know for sure. And here we are not graded on our ability to recite or regurgitate facts, but on our loyal and comprehensive observations in our notebooks and participation as a member of a team working towards better understanding of this site. Other than questions, PC 20 has generated a wealth of exciting new finds and architecture recently as well. In the way of finds, my favorite is probably an impasto (a kind of fine ware) rochetto. Rochetti are associated with weaving and are thought to have been used as spools to hold thread. This rochetto has a grazing stag stamped on both ends of it. Not only is this the only image of a stag that has been found on the site to date, but it's very naturalistic, especially compared to the highly stylized, almost cartoonish griffins that are found on a number of other bucchero pieces. Another interesting find was a piece of bucchero that was incised rather sloppily. The work from this artist (now known as the "Bad Inciser") could be spotted easily because of its distinct character. The most exciting architectural element that has shown itself recently is an agger - an earthen mound marking a boundary. Our agger is made of our earliest stratum and might have been contemporary with a wooden structure identified by early postholes found in other trenches. The agger itself is crowned with a row of fairly sizable stones in a row. These stones continue east past the buttress in the adjacent locus. It was amazing watching these stones show themselves more and more everyday, because in the beginning we believed them to be simply rocks thrown into the fill. Suddenly, these everyday, pain-to-dig-around, obnoxious rocks turned into a line of stones along the mound. A number of lectures in this half of the program were site specific, and even trench specific for PC 20. Prof. Neil Tabor, our very knowledgeable and amiable geologist from SMU, identified the native soil in several of our loci. In his lecture he used our trench as an example and compared what he thought to be the ancient native soil to the modern soil on the hill. It was definitely helpful and interesting to see how the bedrock (which we always seem to be searching for) breaks down into soil through various layers. The layers on the modern slope are strikingly similar to the layers present in our scarp. Two of my favorite lectures recently are probably the lectures on conservation and jewelry. Chris White, our conservator, spoke on what he does here and the importance of conservation in general. It proved to be a process more related to chemistry than I had expected. Chris works on preserving artifacts on a chemical level. He not only has the very important position of making the things we dig up last another thousand years, but he has the very exciting position of noticing the real character of the artifacts we excavate. What we thought was a bronze lump in the field has turned out to be a small bronze lion, and it was the conservators that identified the stag rochetto and even found its other half. Alexis Castor from F&M gave a fascinating lecture on how the jewelry at our site fits into our knowledge of jewelry in the ancient world and Etruscan art. What I found most interesting is the unique situation of the jewelry here. It strongly suggests a votive deposit placed all at the same time by a woman. Apparently, it is also rare to find pairs of earrings or earrings in what seems to be a sanctuary. Lectures like these not only point out interesting and more subtle details of this site, but illustrate different fields in archaeology. Here at Poggio Colla we are not only exposed to excavation, but we interact with specialists in fields from ceramics to jewelry to geophysics to conservation. At the end of the season, all the knowledge we've been so dutifully absorbing (or at least trying to absorb) from the field, from lectures and from readings is coming together. And just in time too, because excavation ended last week. We spent most of Friday cleaning "every speck of dust" out of the trench in preparation for end of season photos over the weekend. Thankfully, I spent Friday working on my individual paleobotany project down by the lab, so I missed the day's ridiculous heat and tedious sweeping by floating soil samples in the shade. Lynn Makowski (left) and Angela Trentacoste processing botanical finds from Poggio Colla. While the floatation process itself is fairly unimpressive - 1. fill a large sieve with soil, 2. partially submerge it in water, 3. use a small tea strainer to pick up anything that floats - its amazing to watch the small, smooth and round seeds separate themselves from the ambiguous mud. We've found a number of fairly large seed deposits that look like barley and wheat. Some of the deposits are of mixed seeds or grains, which we've dubbed Etruscan trail mix. We won't know exactly what the botanical material is until later in the year because Lynn needs to look at them under a microscope to positively identify what they are. Ivo van der Graaff, Angela Trentacoste, and Ben Luley making final drawings of scarp inTrench PC 20. Now in the last week we are filling the trenches up and finishing everything for the end of the season. I spent the first day of the week on the hill helping my supervisor draw the scarps in the trench. The process is time consuming and involves a large amount of repetitive measuring, but it saved me from a long day backfilling in the sun on Podere Funghi. The rest of the week will probably go similarly. We've already finished backfilling everything on the hill but VP's house-sized trench. Hopefully the rest of the week will be spent smoothly moving all the tools and materials to their off-season homes. Friday we all go our separate ways, which is sad and I will miss it here, but I will say it will be nice to take a real shower.   Candace Vaden, Weeks 5 - 7: A day in the life. 6:00 am - At 6:00 am the house comes to life. Getting up at 6:00 am or slightly before has become like second nature - something you discover on the weekends when you try to sleep in and make it all the way to 7:00 am. A good breakfast is essential, and we can always count on Larry to have bread, jam, and the much needed coffee ready for us at the start of the day. 6:45 am - At 6:45 we pile into the cars with Michael, Greg, and Matt or Jess and head up to the hill. The climb up the hill is not my favorite part of the day, but I do have to say that it has gotten much easier since the beginning of the season. I do not think that I am quite "jumping up it like a mountain goat" as the staff promised we would be, but nevertheless, it has gotten easier. Candace Vaden workiing in Trench PC 26. 7:15 am - By 7:15 we are usually up on the hill and beginning our day's work. The morning starts out with the gathering of supplies. This includes a trowel, hand pick, fine haired brush, dustpan, and a bucket. After I have gathered these up and made sure that I have applied plenty of sunscreen, I head over to Trench PC26 to see what Josh has for me to do. Throughout the morning we work on excavating a specific area of the trench. As the season has progressed, we students have definitely shown improvement in our skills as archaeologists. At the beginning of the season, we had to ask a trench supervisor or assistant for help identifying every object we pulled out of the ground. Now, we have become very prolific in identifying things such as tile, pottery, mud brick, and bronze. The combination of this, and the fact that we have acquired considerable skill with a trowel, means that our excavation speed has improved. I truly enjoy excavating. I have wanted to work on an archaeological excavation for many years, but I never quite imagined what it would feel like to pull an object out of the ground that has not been held in over 2000 years. The information about the Etruscans that we are able to gain from excavation is remarkable. For example, last week was an interesting week in PC 26, as we discovered both Stratum 4, and a floor level sitting on top of Stratum 4. Finding Stratum 4 was one of the primary goals for this season, and as it was getting very close to the end of the season, we were beginning to think that we were not going to find it. Discovering the floor level was also really exciting. As I was excavating, I began to come upon large pithoi, as well as huge piles of carbonized seeds. I bagged several zipper bags full of at least three different types of seeds. These seeds were sent to the lab where they will be analyzed by type. We also took carbon samples from this area so that we can run a Carbon 14 dating analysis on the area. At this moment, we believe that the area we are excavating was a sunken room for the storage of grain. Left to right: Jennifer Isham, Josh Moran, and Candace Vaden discuss finds from PC 26. Now, while we spend most of our day excavating there are two other times of the day that are very important… 10:00 am - Cookie Break! We all get rather excited when cookie break time rolls around. For one, we are all hungry as it has been four hours since breakfast, and two, cookie break involves Nutella. Nutella is definitely one of the most adored Poggio Colla staples. 12:30 pm - Lunch Time! Our lunches on site are fabulous. Larry usually makes us a salad, such as his wonderful bean salad, or potato salad. We also have sandwiches with pesto spread, lots of fresh tomatoes, olives, and fruit. We have all learned to ignore the large amounts of dirt all over ourselves and enjoy the wonderful food. We also have developed a fondness for dirt piles, and during lunch they serve as both table and nap area. It really is amazing how comfortable a dirt pile can be. 3:30 pm - Around this time, we usually head down the hill and back to Vigna (where most of the students live). Sometimes we have pottery washing and processing, and sometimes we are just able to relax until lecture or dinner. 6:45 pm - About three nights a week, we have a lecture about something related to our site. There have been several very interesting lectures. My personal favorite was the lecture by VP (Robert Vander Poppen) in which we learned about survey archaeology. This was a very hands-on lecture, and we spent some time outside the house looking for the remains of the "pistachio culture", which had recently been scattered for the purposes of our education. 8:00 pm - Dinner Time! Dinner is definitely one of the highlights of the day. Bruno and Beppina, the caretakers of Vigna, are wonderful cooks. Dinner is a very relaxing time, filled with lots of good conversation - and did I mention? - wonderful food. After dinner, we usually all congregate in lawn chairs, chat, and enjoy the view in the Mugello. The views here are amazing, and the sunsets are phenomenal. Candace Vaden analyzing bucchero for her student research project. As you might be able to tell from my narrative, I have greatly enjoyed my time here at Poggio Colla. Our days are long and sometimes difficult, but the experiences that I have had make it all worthwhile. I have learned a great deal, and I am now fully convinced that archaeology is indeed what I want to pursue as a career (This is a good thing, as I am a student of Classical Archaeology, and am about to begin to apply to graduate schools in the field). One thing for which I was not prepared when I arrived, is how wonderful the people are. I do not know that I have ever been around such cool people. In the seven weeks that I have been here, I have made friendships that I expect will continue for the rest of my life. Apparently there are few better bonding experiences than spending hours a day with people while being covered in dirt, sweat, and grime. However, I have gone on long enough. We only have a few days left in the Mugello and time is precious. Left to right: Candace Vaden, Josh Moran, Jennifer Isham, and Nat Erb-Satullo in PC 26.     Chelsea Stonerock in the study room, working on the roof tile research project. Co-Directors: Gregory Warden gwarden@mail.smu.edu and Michael Thomas mlthomas@mail.utexas.edu Excavation house phone during the field season: (011-39) 055-844-9834