Wednesday, July 4, 2018

These are a few of our favorite things

Halfway through the season we have learned a lot about archaeology and are now settled into the daily routine of coming to site. Two and a half weeks is surely enough time to develop some strong feels and here are a few of the Gabii Project's favorite things!

Our favorite archaeological terms

The only entry that didn't make the word cloud was "Oh look it's a body!" courtesy of Sarah Gilmer. Luckily, there has been no reason to exclaim that yet this season, but she is ever at the ready. 

Favorite Archaeological Tool
Now tools are an even more contentious subject. There are only so many picks, bags, and other equipment to go around, here is what our team most loves using.

The pickaxe won by a firm margin, it seems like everyone occasionally needs to just blow off some steam. There are a few downsides though, like "when you carefully are troweling back a layer and think that you've found the margin, but then they tell you to just pickaxe it all away" Neda Bowden "imagines."

Our other favorite take away comes from Sadie Sisk, "no one loves to sweep, that would be a lie." Do we have two liars?

 Favorite Pottery Vessel or Finish
As a part of their time all the Gabii students rotate through finds where they learn to identify and draw our ceramics. Now none of what we find at Gabii come close to these images, but they do represent some of the fabrics we can see. Make sure to ask a Gabine which was their favorite when they get home!

One errant entry proposed by Emily Sharp was "cute wear" aka all miniature vessels. While it isn't a pottery type, Kelly Miklas wanted to make sure that we knew she was "all about that base." Of course, our finds supervisor Allison Ritterhaus has the most enthusiastic response as she just starts rubbing bucchero lovingly against her cheek.

Coming to Rome is nothing without sampling the local cuisine. Here are our favorite Roman pasta types! There are plenty more Italian pastas, like the Genoan pesto pictured, ragu Bolognese, tortellini, pasta alla Norma, just to name a few of the non-Roman options out there. Perhaps personal sentiment is best captured by Kyra Webb, for whom "cacio e pepe is life."