Friday, July 16, 2010

Weeks III and IV at Gabii

The last two weeks have flown by us, scarcely leaving time to make a post on the blog!  We are in the midst of a heat wave here in Italy, but you would be hard pressed to tell considering how hard our team is working - they are undaunted by the heat.  The last two weeks have been exciting and quite busy.  We were fortunate to have Mario Torelli (Perugia) visit us on Friday, July 10 and it was great fun to show him around the site and benefit from his insights.  This week our colleagues from the Archaeological Prospection Services of Southampton visited us to check various magnetic anomalies discovered during the 2007-2008 survey phase; we were also lucky to have several sets of parents and relatives of team members visit us, so Gabii has been a busy place.  But for the most part, we have been digging - and doing a lot of it!  Our Area B has finally emerged from the overburden of Roman tombs and occupation evidence is finally appearing.  Elsewhere on the site we continue to analyze various bits of evidence, including an in-depth examination of animal bones and the ongoing collection of environmental samples.  In all, we are extremely please with the progress we are making and look forward to the week coming up.