2001 TRENCH PF 7 Robert Vander Poppen, Field Supervisor Field Supervisor of Trench PF 7, Robert Vander Poppen. Week 5: Robert Vander Poppen explains PF 7 during trench tours. This week has been one of definite transformations in both the trench and our team. As we have began to unravel some of the mysteries of the trench the students are beginning to grasp the theoretical as well as mechanical aspects of digging. Now as soon as an object or feature is exposed the students have begun to attach interpretations to the objects and architecture. Many of their ideas have begun to help shape the overall interpretation of the trench. In addition each season there is a moment where each student breaks out of their shell and moves from being a timid inexperienced excavator toward digging with confidence and knowledge. I can say without a doubt that this week one after another each of the field school participants has undergone that transformation. As you will read further into this report you will see that their timing is impeccable as we are now encountering some of the trickiest and most delicate excavation that we will see this year. Robert Vander Poppen discussing the kiln (to his right) found in PF 7. The week has been loaded with a number of discoveries. It began with Mónica Jiménez's discovery of a beautiful section of a large storage vessel called a pithos. The discovery of a pithos fragment is always an exciting one as there is always the chance that some of the contents will still be affixed to the edges of the fragment, or will be buried immediately beneath. Once Mónica had carefully detailed the edges of the fragment, we carefully lifted it and took soil samples to send to our conservation team in case there might have been any botanical remains in the soil. Shortly thereafter we came upon another interesting discovery. In our next pass we discovered a large patch of "gley" (a thick gooey claylike soil). This was an extremely exciting find since the formation of "gley" is facilitated by material of deeper deposition preventing the percolation and drainage of water. An area of such impermeability often is associated with a packed floor level or a threshold. Beneath the layer is a soil packed with a number of ceramic and charcoal inclusions indicating a period of heavy use. I believe that this represents a floor level within our structure at a level of about 5cm higher than the floor level of the room in Trench PF 6. View of kiln area in Trench PF 7. Note reddish burned soil. The next surprise of the week came when Keith Doherty took just a few minutes to define the edges of our north-south wall. A job which normally would have taken a few minutes turned into a daylong project, when Keith discovered what appears to be the edge of another kiln buried beneath the wall. It appears that this probable kiln, which lies buried beneath the wall, was built and used in association with an earlier phase of construction than the one now extant. This earlier level of occupation makes sense for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that one cannot use a kiln which lies buried beneath a wall. Robert Vander Poppen studies the walls in PF 7. In addition in the last couple of days we have made another significant discovery. The wall, which runs in a roughly north-south direction in P F6 actually meets up at the presumed floor level with the east-west wall in PF 7. Now we have a definite link between trenches PF 6 and PF 7. This has allowed us to begin to postulate the exact nature of the structure which has arisen in the FOD, since we now have three sides to two separate rooms in the building. At this moment our best guess is that the building is some sort of production area, probably of ceramics judging by the huge concentrations of pottery in the PF 1& 2 midden. It seems to have a small rectangular interior with some kind of portico roofed in a perishable material such as thatch. This has been a very exciting week for us in PF 7 as we have now begun to see the work of the past four seasons all begin to come together to build a picture of the activity that has occurred in the vicinity of our structure. In the next week we will continue to excavate the material around our late kiln in order to try to understand its relationship to the structure and to the earlier kiln. Detail showing small cavity in wall in Trench PF 7. Week 6: Robert Vander Poppen supervising excavation in his Trench PF 7. Left to right: Jurriaan Venneman and Robert Vander Poppen learn from Jess Galloway how to use the survey instruments. Assistant Field Supervisor Jurriaan Venneman Field School Participants Keith Doherty Monica Jimenez Rachel Julis Laura Veresh In the last week not much has changed in PF 7. We have continued to work in the area of the trench near the kiln, and also have begun to remove some of the material from the spill which issues forth from the mouth of the kiln. The excavation of this area has led to some interesting discoveries in turn. In excavating the spill from out of the mouth of the kiln we have been able to determine a number of things about the kiln itself. I will begin by discussing the features within the spill and then will turn to what this means in the context of the kiln as a whole. View of PF 7 in the final stage of excavation, with kiln covered at left. The first decision of the last week was to leave the kiln in situ, but to excavate out the spill. The spill itself is comprised of a number of stones which seem to have come from some superstructure which surrounded the kiln. In addition to the rocks, the spill contains a relatively high artifact density, yielding more pottery than the rest of the trench combined. This pottery has been of a largely mangled and burned nature. The soil itself is amazing. The dirt which is situated here is a greasy clay with tons of ceramic and carbon inclusions. The amount of carbon in this soil instantly stains one's hands black when it is touched. The carbonaceous nature of the soil is also a bad thing, as the soil seems to be eating ceramics. The soil is mottled with disintegrated ceramic material which will not separate from the soil matrix. The other interesting thing that the investigation of the spill has told us is the level of the base of the kiln. It seems that we have approximately 15cm of the kiln preserved. Also interesting is that the elevation of this feature is almost identical to that of the floor which is associated with the hearth in PF 5. It would appear then that the hearth and kiln are of contemporary use. Laura Veresh seems happy digging in spite of the heat in Trench PF 7. Jurriaan Venneman and Mónica Jiménez sweeping in PF 7. In a larger scope, we have now begun to find some parallels for our architecture and kilns throughout Northern Etruria. At a site in Verruchio a domestic structure was found with a series of kilns tucked alongside the building and a hearth inside. These kilns like ours are light bulb shaped and are 140cm in diameter. It would appear then that the structure at the Podere Funghi is part of a larger Northern Etruscan series of conventions for what a pottery production zone should look like. A similar phenomenon can be postulated about the kiln which seems also to fit in to a larger set of consuitudines. The other structure to which we have drawn a parallel is that of a Hellenistic house in Faenza. Here the structure seems to have employed an architectural scheme similar to ours. There the walls were made of single coursed rubble except for at the corners where large round blocks served as supporting pads for wooden posts which in turn bore the entire weight of the roofing timbers. It seems most likely that our structure is using a similar technique and that the large circular block which we uncovered early on is indeed one of these post pads. Assistant Field Supervisor Jurriaan Venneman working in PF 7. On a bittersweet note we have finished excavation with trench PF 7 a few days early due to the diligence and talent of my team of excavators. On the whole this presents my team with a great situation. I get an extra few days to construct my drawings of the trench, and my team gets the chance to work elsewhere on the site gaining some experience with other crews. For the moment most of the PF 7 team is now working in PF 8 with Supervisor Katie Blanchard. Look for your favorite field school student on the PF 8 web page in the coming days. Rachel Julis and Bridget Marx sweeping around the edge of the trench. Week 7: The Entire FOD Team: Christel Veen, Rachel Julis, Keith Doherty, Laura Veresh, Mónica Jiménez, Robert Vander Poppen, Jurriaan Venneman, Robert Belanger, Mary Phelan, Mark Stankovic, Katy Blanchard, and Greg Stone at PF 5, 6, and 7. As an excavation staff we went into this season of fieldwork with a number of questions we sought to answer about both the Podere Funghi and the site above at Poggio Colla. We have created three times as many questions as those we have answered. This season, over all, has been one which has caused us to step back and question some of our old assumptions about the site, and to reevaluate the information from past seasons. The Podere Funghi has not been exempt from this process. View from the northwest of PF 7 (foreground) and PF 5 (background). When we began our campaign seven weeks ago we expected to find the western extension of what was then presumed to be a house in PF 5. We did indeed discover the extension of the structure. This, however, was the only thing which happened according to plan. Shortly after discovering the western continuation of a wall which extended into PF 7 from PF 5, we discovered what appeared to be a wall spill to the south caused by the plow. When we further excavated this area we realized that, instead of a wall spill, we had a wall proper. The next thing was to attempt to explain this odd configuration of two walls of the same orientation and construction technique in such close proximity to each other. After continued excavation, I now believe that this space was some kind of storage area, maybe associated directly with the processes of pottery production. Large worked cornerstone and walls in Trench PF 7. In addition to this wall we discovered that our east-west wall, which we had expected to find, turned a corner and proceeded to the north. At this corner a large round block about 75 cm in diameter stands. It is the lone block in the wall which is of this size, and seems to have been consciously selected to serve as the corner stone. This makes sense as at Faenza, a site near ours, a similar instance occurs. Here there is evidence that all of the corners of the structure have these large blocks which in turn support wooden pillars which hold up the roofing timbers. So far we have discovered two corners of our structure and have two of these massive blocks. I am convinced that we are dealing with a similar support structure. As for the wall itself which continues north from the block, it appears that this area was much more lightly used due to a thinner stratigraphy wherein the level of the occupation seems to have been at about ten centimeters higher than that of the rest of the structure located in PF 5 and PF 6. This leads me to believe that this area might be some kind of porch which faces off of the western edge of the building towards the monumental complex at Poggio Colla. This assumption was bolstered a few days later when we discovered that there was another north-south wall at a lower elevation which enclosed a large tile fall. The changes in stratigraphy here lead me to believe that this wall is the true division line between the exterior and interior space within the building and that the area within the northeast portion of the trench is some kind of intermediate space. Overview of kiln (foreground), cornerstone, wall, and bedrock in Trench PF 7. Perhaps our most intriguing find of the season came a few weeks into the campaign. In the western portion of our trench we discovered a red burning of the sandstone within the soil matrix. This stain of burnt sandstone turned out to be light bulb shaped and measured 137cm in diameter. Within this ring of sandstone was a ring of terra cotta. This feature is without a doubt an Etruscan updraft kiln. Its mouth, or flue, was situated to take advantage of the strong breeze out of the valley to the southwest and would have needed little or no extra labor to have provided it with the wind necessary to fire pottery. It appears that the kiln remains intact below our plowzone to a level of at least eight centimeters. We decided early on in the season not to excavate the kiln, but instead to leave it in situ and concentrate our efforts instead on the large spill of rocks and earth from the front of the structure. Within this spill we excavated many sherds of vitrified and badly burned pottery. The soil here also was marked with evidence of the firing process. It consisted of a dark greasy soil which was filled with carbon to the point that excavating it stained one's hands dark black. All of this is stereotypical of an area associated with a kiln. Another surprise came when a few days after discovering the first kiln we came upon a second one. This second kiln has a slightly larger diameter and is located beneath a wall. This then indicates that there is an earlier phase of activity in the area which would have been associated with the earlier kiln. This tells us a number of interesting things. One is that it hints at the existence of an earlier structure which would have been associated with the kiln. The second interesting side note is that this kiln represents a link of continued use of the space for pottery production. This continued period of use lasts for a time period longer than the life of the current structure. In other words, though the architecture has changed, the space carries some cultural and habitual continuity. View from the southwest of PfF7 with kiln and walls in foreground and PF 6 in the distance. Both of these kilns have now made the secure link which was missing between the building on the crest of the hill and the midden to the southwest. The large concentrations of pottery to the exclusion of almost all other types of artifact indicates that this midden instead of being either communal or general purpose was instead the trash pile of the potters who worked in the structure lower on the slope of the hill. All in all, the season has helped us to define both the date and nature of the building situated on the crest of the hill of the Podere Funghi. We can now confidently say that the area holds a Hellenistic pottery production workshop and the trash heap associated with this manufacture. Whether we can classify the structure as a workshop alone, however, will have to wait until we excavate further sections of the structure and gain a sense of what activities were taking place in the other sections of the building. Robert Vander Poppen and Rachel Julis at PF 7 during bi-pod photography. Robert Vander Poppen explains the kilns and wall foundations in PF 7 during final trench tours. Robert Vander Poppen, Katy Blanchard, Robert Belanger, and Jamison Miller using the bi-pod to photograph Trench PF 7. 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