Colleghi

Our excavations include the participation of several Italian colleagues, graduates of Italy's University of Perugia. Below are Stefano Spiganti, Claudia Constantino, Ilenia Argentieri, and Serena Trippetti, newly outfitted with Drew baseball caps.

A Totally Sunny Day

Oddly enough for Italy in June, today's post merits its title. Yesterday it rained lightly for most of the afternoon, so we stayed at home and then headed to the museum for a lecture (by me) on ancient urbanism. A bit more tomorrow, and the students who are off to Rome and Pompeii this weekend will have the background to do the homework I'm going to give them.

Nice progress on the site as we have finally started to get to some layers below the topsoil. Some walls have emerged and numerous small coins (folles), most of which are too beat up to be of much use in close dating. The ones that are well enough preserved seem late 3rd - early 4th c. AD. Too soon to go very far with that though.

On a lighter note, last night the Azzurri finally won a game in the European soccer championship, so the sports pages are striking a happier tone.

Che cosa?

Remarkably the day passed without any rain. We mostly uncovered the previously excavated trenches from last November. A nice Constantinian coin and some other "stray" finds. Tomorrow to some new areas.

Arrabbiata

The title of this post is both the style of my pasta at lunch today and the state of the aforementioned deities. Having stopped raining briefly after lunch today, it started up again and new continues lightly. The eastern skies (over the Apennines) are clearer, but the forecast isn't very good...better than today, but not good.

Here's a photo of almost everyone in the Roman cistern at Todi.

The Gods must be angry

After a promising start yesterday, we had to stop after a fairly short - but drenching - downpour in the mid-afternoon. Today we awoke to rain.

Meanwhile at home, temperatures near 100 (low 30s, as they'd say here) and massive winds and power outages.

Inscription

Well, as expected, all three inscriptions are in the CIL ("Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum") volume that deals with this part of Italy, XI. Here's a photo of the inscription that gives the name of the site. I had to play with it a bit to get it to be readable (ok, mostly readable), so it appears to be in black and white, though it isn't. You can make out in the big second line "MART. TUDE" which is the middle of "Vicus Martis Tudertium", that is, "Settlement of the Mars of the people of Todi."

Sunday we plan to start the geomagnetic survey, in collaboration with Tomaso Mattioli from the University of Perugia. Should be good.

Someday the big trailer will arrive from the local town ('nuff said, if you know about Italian bureaucracy and work habits).

Arrivato!

I arrived Sunday in Italy without incident, despite the massive thunderstorms on the East Coast during the day.

Spent the day with my colleague Carlo Zoccoli, visiting a few places, including the site of the excavations where we observed a few inscriptions embedded in the wall of the medieval tower next to the church. Two have been published already, but perhaps not the third.

The first is over the small door to the tower and reads:

PỌḄḶỊCIA·A·L·
SALVIA

The other two were noted by Becatti back in the 30s and include one of the inscriptions that mentions the place by name.

Today's lesson: Always Bring the Camera