Getting oriented

25 June – today dawned hot and hazy, but our team was glad to welcome the 2012 group of student volunteers to the site who bused out from Rome to start work at 8am. Today’s time on-site was given over to the preliminary activities that must come at the start of any campaign, from the distribution of equipment and safety gear to tours of the archaeological area of Gabii and of our own site, and finishing with the students’ orientation to living in Rome conducted by Accent International. It was a busy day all around. While the students toured, the staff continued to work on-site and all is primed for a quick start to excavation tomorrow morning.

Nicola Terrenato welcomes the team to the site.

The new students receive a tour of the site.

Field director Anna Gallone discussing the side streets at Gabii.

More photos:

Gabii Project 2012 - week one

Run-up to a new campaign: Gabii pre-season 2012

Returning to Gabii, now for the sixth consecutive year of fieldwork, is always a study in contrasts. Many of us rush to Italy from university classrooms and campuses, fresh off the frantic business of ending an academic term. Arriving at Gabii, things are mostly peaceful. The vegetation has grown high, the poppies bloom, the lizards, porcupines, and harvester ants rule the site. But, a few days of hard work and the archaeological site springs back to life (and action) … but the lizards still stand their ground, reminding us who really owns the place. Thus it has been this season. The pre-season has been busy, from the expansion of our pre-existing area D and the westward expansion of the overall excavation area to create Area F, the staff has been busy preparing the site for the arrival of the full team in Rome.

This season’s goals include continued investigation of a domestic compound in Area D and the exploration of the newly defined Area F that represents part of yet another city block of the urban layout. The team has high hopes for both of these areas and we are especially interested to see the relationship between our excavation area and portions of the city excavated by the Soprintendenza in Rome a decade ago.

Joining us on-site will be over 40 student volunteers who hail from a host of colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. They will participate in all aspects of our fieldwork, including finds analysis, environmental processing, zooarchaeological analysis, and digital modeling and topography.

We are looking forward to an excellent season. Watch this blog space for more updates as the season progresses and also watch our student blog for the diggers’ points of view.

 

Gabii Project at "Ricerca in Cittadella" Giornate di studio di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte dedicate a Roberto Coroneo

Chiara Pilo of the Gabii Project will present a paper at "Ricerca in Cittadella", Giornate di studio di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte dedicate a Roberto Coroneo, in Cagliari, Sardinia, at the Cittadella dei Musei, Villa Pollini, held from 7 to 12 May 2012. Pilo's paper, "Una lucerna configurata da Gabii: valenze apotropaiche di un singolare strumento per l’illuminazione" focuses on an anthropomorphic lamp discovered at Gabii in 2009. Pilo's research continues to investigate both the nature of, and parallels for, this unusual Roman oil lamp; her paper is scheduled for 17:10 on Wednesday, May 9, 2012. The conference is hosted by the Università degli Studi di Cagliari and its Dipartimento di Storia, Beni Culturali e Territorio. A .pdf of the program is linked here.

Gabii Project at ASMOSIA X

Jason Farr (Ph.D. candidate, IPCAA, University of Michigan), will present a paper on his ongoing research into the local tufo at Gabii - lapis Gabinus - and its exploitation by means of quarrying in the late republican and early imperial periods. Farr's dissertation research seeks not only to better understand this tufo type, but also to explore connections between the Gabine quarries and the construction industry in Rome and Latium. Farr's paper, "Lapis Gabinus: new evidence for quarrying at Gabii", will be presented in Rome at the ASMOSIA X (Association for the Study of Marble and Other Stones In Antiquity), conference. This international conference takes place in Rome, from 21 to 26 May 2012, and is hosted by the Università di Roma 'La Sapienza'. Farr's talk is scheduled to for 09.00am on 23 May in the session entitled "THEMATIC SESSION III: Provenance identification II: (other stones)". The conference website is here.

"Coils over Spoil – Metal detecting and archaeological interpretation at Gabii" at 22nd TRAC 2012

The use of metal detectors in Mediterranean archaeology regularly generates a lot of discussion on the internet. The Gabii Project carried out a controlled experiment using metal detectors to check stratigraphically excavated soil with metal detectors in order to track the recovery rates of metallic artifacts - and we have some interesting and significant results to share! The first look at this evidence will be offered by Laura Banducci (Ph.D. candidate, IPCAA, University of Michigan) and Jason Farr (Ph.D. candidate, IPCAA, University of Michigan), who will present their study as a poster entitled "Coils over Spoil – Metal detecting and archaeological interpretation at Gabii." This presentation will take place as part of the 22nd Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference (TRAC) taking place in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. The poster will be presented on 30 March 2012, from 5.30 to 7.00 pm.

Gabii Project at AISCOM XVIII

The Gabii Project will share research into a series of floors discovered in the context of several Republican period buildings on the site at the upcoming eighteenth meeting of Associazione Italiana per lo Studio e la Conservazione del Mosaico (AISCOM) in Cremona, Italy, March 14 to 17, 2012. The paper presented by Anna Gallone, and authored in collaboration with Jeffrey A. Becker and Marcello Mogetta, under the title “Gabii in età repubblicana: i rivestimenti pavimentali di alcune unità abitative,” will explore the nature of several paved floors and attempt to contextualize them with respect to other archaeologically attested pavements in Republican Italy.

Veal to discuss ancient fuel economies in Ann Arbor

Robyn Veal of the University of Sydney will discuss ancient fuel economies in a talk at the University of Michigan on February 23, 2012. Veal is particularly interested in the role played by wood and wood charcoal fuel in the ancient Mediterranean. In her talk she will consider evidence from Bronze Age sites in Sardinia as well as evidence from Gabii where she is presently studying charcoal remains recovered by the Gabii Project.

If you're going, here are the details:

“Ancient Fuel Economies: Bronze Age Pran’e Siddi to Roman Gabii”

Dr. Robyn Veal (British School at Rome and University of Sydney)

February 23, 2012, from 12.00 to 1.00pm

University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology

1109 Geddes Avenue • Ann Arbor MI 48109 • (734) 763-6095

Location: Ruthven Museums Building Room 2009