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.

"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.

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

Gabine research and the web

The Gabii Project team is a multinational group and is, during the winter and spring, dispersed among many countries, several continents, and quite a few time zones. Despite being in different places, the work of the project goes on as we work not only on post-excavation projects but also on moving various studies to publication. In this off-season work, the project is increasingly aided by the collaborative potential offered by internet platforms; team members routinely confer and meet to discuss research projects and plan excavation strategy and policy for future seasons.

Today, the team tried a new experiment, that being a collaborative research seminar online - thus, webinar. Through the miracle of Skype (thanks, Skype!), we convened for nearly four hours with almost 20 team members for a thought-provoking and stimulating session. We heard reports on various work in progress, including work on the dating and contextualization of Gabii's orthogonal plan (Marcello Mogetta), investigation of recovery rates for metal artifacts (Laura Banducci and Jason Farr), human osteology (Kristina Killgrove), quarrying of the local tufo, lapis Gabinus (Jason Farr), and anthropomorphic terracottas (Chiara Pilo). In addition to these reports we also discussed, thanks to Laura Motta, Marcello Mogetta, and Ivan Cangemi, an ongoing sampling experiment on-site that allows us to consider unit volume and recovery rates for various anthropic and organic materials. 

The webinar was a great success and an excellent case study in harnessing the power of the web to promote collaboration and discussion. The team plans future webinars in the next months to continue our fruitful discussions of this morning.

Nowlin presents at "Death, Decay, and Discovery"

J. Nowlin

Jessica Nowlin, Ph.D. student in the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University and a member of the Gabii Project's topography team, will present a paper as part of the upcoming symposium "Death, Decay, and Discovery: An interdisciplinary workshop on taphonomic approaches to understanding burial practice" on April 9, 2011. The workshop, organized by Brown University post-doctoral fellow Allison Davis, brings together mortuary archaeologists and taphonomists to discuss the utility of these approaches in answering larger archaeological questions. Nowlin's paper, "More than Pretty Pictures: The Use of Three-Dimensional Modeling in the Documentation of Funerary Remains" concentrates on the use of digital photogrammetry at Gabii for modeling funerary contexts. In 2009 Nowlin's work on digital models of sensitive  sub-Geometric elite tombs at Gabii has resulted, in part, in the forthcoming publication of said tombs in J.A. Becker and J. Nowlin. 2011. "Orientalizing Infant Burials from Gabii, Italy." BABESCH 86:9-21. 

Will the real Lapis Gabinus please stand up?

Jason Farr

Jason Farr, assistant trench master with the Gabii Project and Ph.D. candidate in Classical archaeology at the University of Michigan, will present a paper at the upcoming Duke-UNC Graduate Colloquium in Classics taking place April 1-3, 2011. The colloquium, a long-standing graduate forum, centers this year on the theme of "Refuse and Reuse: The Challenges of Repurposing and Re-imagining in the Ancient World" and will feature keynote speaker Eric Varner (Emory). Jason's paper, "Re-Purposing Lapis Gabinus and Re-Imagining Gabii: the Exploitation of a Stone Resource and the Memory of a Latin City" will discuss the Roman quarrying of lapis Gabinus, as well Gabii's role as a symbol in Latin literature. Jason has defended a dissertation proposal at Michigan in fall 2010 entitled "The Quarries of Gabii and Lapis Gabinus" and is in the early stages of his work on the Gabine quarries.