Bastardo and other places

Took a little spin in the car Saturday morning and visited a few towns, like Bastardo (yes, it also means what you think it means), Torri and Marcellano. Good thing I didn't wait until today, because it's raining now. (Picture from Torri.)
In other news, excavation in our west trench revealed a fairly large section of cocciopesto floor, which is fairly high up in the stratigraphy (still in the topsoil really), and therefore seems to confirm the theory that there was a later building phase (still Roman).

How long is that wall?

So we took off the upper layers of topsoil above the end of our very long wall, using the geomagnetic survey data from last year as a guide. Answer to the post's question: about 22.5m or 75 Roman feet. The picture shows the end of the wall to the left after the removal of topsoil.

The Gang's All Here!

Start of the second season, and everyone has arrived safely!

Very hot here in Italy, with temperatures in the low 30s (upper 80s and low 90s for those in Fahrenheit-land), but some hope of a break on Wednesday. Of course they are predicting cool weather for the weekend too.

Good news: gas is much cheaper than last year and so is the euro (which has been on the rise in the past few weeks, so let's hope that stops). We also have internet in our office/lab/storeroom in Massa Martana. (Still searching for a title for this workspace; all suggestions gratefully accepted.)

Today we went to the site, shot some points on the handy-dandy Total Station very generously loaned to us by Bryn Mawr – and ably run by Bryn Mawr '10 Sophia Wolfenden. We also have begun to run into various friends we made last year.

Tomorrow, picks hit the ground!

Summer Application Deadline Extended

The Off-Campus office has extended the application deadline for our summer program another two weeks, until April 15th. SIgn up now!

The new fliers are here!

OK, so it's not that exciting, but here's the new advertisement flier, suitable for downloading and sharing with all your college-age friends.

In the Fasti Online

The site is now registered with the on-line Fasti, which is essentially a collection of "summary notices of excavations throughout the area of the Roman Empire." Always fun to see what's going on in the world of Roman archaeology, but if you want to cut to the chase, our site can be found here.

AIA Talk

Here's my AIA talk (with the slides in the right order, for those of you who were there). Text coming soon. Click on the movie itself to open a larger version (31.5MB) in the QuickTime player.