Gabii at the AIA in Philadelphia

Results from the 2007 and 2008 field seasons at Gabii will be presented at the upcoming annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, to take place in Philadelphia, Pa., in January 2009. The paper will appear in session 4A on Saturday, January, 10, 2009, from 8:30 until 11:00 AM and is entitled "A New Plan of an Ancient Italian City: Gabii Revealed".

Gabii field school program 2009

The Gabii Project is pleased to announce a field program in 2009 for student volunteers. The 5-week program will run from June 21 through July 25, 2009.

All student volunteers will be housed at the Hotel Villa Mercede in Frascati, Italy. This hotel features air conditioning, wireless internet, and a swimming pool. Two students will share each guestroom that includes a bathroom and two beds. Frascati is connected to Rome by a local train (30 minutes). The on-site restaurant at the hotel will provide breakfast, a packed lunch, and dinner. The Project will arrange for vegetarian meals on request and will attempt to accommodate special dietary needs. Some meals will be served on Saturday and Sunday at the hotel for any who elect to remain close to Frascati. The daily schedule (Monday-Friday) will begin with breakfast at 6:30 am, followed by a prompt 7:00 am departure for the site. Students will be transported via a contracted motor coach. Once on site there will be a mid-morning break and a lunch break. Student will depart the site around 4:30 pm to return to Frascati. Dinner will be served at the hotel around 8:00 pm. Students will have weekend days (Saturday and Sunday) free. No prior experience is required. Cost: $3,600

Please visit the Project website for more information and application instructions, or see the listing at the AIA's Archaeological Fieldwork Opportunities Bulletin site.

Gabii Project seeks staff members for 2009

The Gabii Project seeks experienced excavation staff members to serve as trench supervisors and assistant trench supervisors, as well as possible specialist staff for the field laboratory. The ideal candidate will have completed a field school program and have at least one prior season of fieldwork experience. Experience with stratigraphic excavation and Harris matrices is a plus; while not a requirement, the ability to communicate in Italian would also be advantageous.

In some cases the project will be able to subsidize the cost of room and board for staff members and, in exceptional cases, may be able to subsidize travel costs for certain staff members. Necessary equipment and daily transportation to and from the site will be provided for excavation staff. Staff members will be responsible for their own transportation to and from Italy.

Staff members must be in good health, have passed a recent physical examination, and submit documentation of current and up-to-date inoculations. Staff members must also have a current passport, valid until at least October 2009, allowing entry into Italy.
We are seeking experienced excavation staff members to serve as trench supervisors and assistant trench supervisors, as well as possible specialist staff for the field laboratory. The ideal candidate will have completed a field school program and have at least one prior season of fieldwork experience. Experience with stratigraphic excavation and Harris matrices is a plus; while not a requirement, the ability to communicate in Italian would also be advantageous.

If you are interested in submitting an application for a staff position with the Gabii Project, please send a cover letter, current curriculum vitae, and a letter of reference from someone familiar with your fieldwork experience and credentials to:

Prof. Jeffrey Becker
Managing Director, The Gabii Project
c/o Department of Archaeology
Boston University
675 Commonwealth Avenue, Suite 347
Boston MA 02215 U.S.A.

The deadline for the receipt of applications is December 1, 2008. Arrangements will be made for informal interviews either at the AIA/APA meetings in Philadelphia, Pa., in January 2009 or via other means.

For more information, please visit the Project website.

Gabii Project website goes live

The Gabii Project is pleased to announce the launch of its new website where, among other content, you will find information about the 2009 fieldwork program for students.

Mechanical bore holes

As we near the end of survey operations at Gabii, on the basis of data collected from manual core sampling this summer, we elected to carry out several mechanical bore holes in order to sample a larger range of stratigraphiic deposits and, hopefully, ascertain the depth of the bedrock for several loci on the site. The positioning of the mechanical bore holes was determined on the basis of manual samples that showed promise in terms of preserved stratigraphy and/or anthropic inclusions. By distributing the coverage of these mechanical samples across the intramural area of Gabii, we hope to be able to ascertain something of an idea about the nature of the archaeological deposits in various areas of interest. Once the data from both sets of bore holes has been compiled, we will be able to construct a site profile for Gabii and thus be better able to target the placement of our first trenches in 2009.

Core-sampling and surveying 2007 and 2008

Work at Gabii in 2007 and 2008 has concentrated on a survey of the former urban area within the line of the ancient city walls. Today the site of Gabii, contained within the Parco Archeologico di Gabii, is abandoned, as it has been for many centuries at this point. The site is largely given over to tall grasses and vegetation, making for extremely favorable survey conditions. Our project adopted a survey strategy that included the use both of magnetometry and core-sampling, both manual and mechanical. The former method of course aims at the detection of sub-surface features, particularly architecture, while the latter method was employed in order to help gauge the stratigraphic depth of the site along certain axes, thus creating a stratigraphic profile. Surprisingly, no integrated site-plan of Gabii exists, and this constitutes a prime objective for the Project at this stage.

The magnetometry survey was carried out by our colleagues from The British School at Rome, led by Stephen Kay. Beginning in summer 2007, the magnetometry survey will continue into autumn 2008 by which time at least some 30 ha of the site will have been surveyed. The preliminary results of the survey by the BSR team suggest an interesting urban layout with numerous features of interest preserved beneath the soil. As the team now filters the data this information will prove extremely useful in the development of an excavation strategy.

The other prong of our survey approach has been the use of core-sampling with manual augurs. Working along two principal axes imposed on the site, this approach yielded a great deal of information about the stratigraphic sequence at Gabii. The sampling was conducted within the already delimited archaeological area and also to the south of the modern via Prenestina on private property that is now used as a landing strip for ultra-light aircraft. Throughout the core-sampling the team carefully collected data on the preservation of archaeological layers and also sought to understand the geological profile of the site to the extent possible; in other words, to determine where the anthropic layers (man-made) ended so as to assess the stratigraphic depth of the preserved deposits at Gabii. To this point the results of this second arm of the survey look to be promising. In 2008 the core-sampling team was composed of Marcello Mogetta, Jason Farr, Elizabeth Robinson, Carlo Virili, and Jeffrey Becker.

Taken together, data from magnetometry and core-sampling will provide great help in further pursuing the archaeology of this important ancient city.

The Gabii Project

Welcome to the excavation blog for the Gabii Project, an archaeological initiative focused on the survey, excavation, and study of the ancient Italian city of Gabii, situated some 13 km. to the east of Rome. The Gabii Project is a multi-institution, international effort, currently spearheaded by Nicola Terrenato of the University of Michigan with collaboration from Boston University, the University of Perugia (Italy), the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma, and the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici per il Lazio. This blog will be a forum for posting information about the progress of our work and the results of our research. We hope you will come back soon for further updates.