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Digging The Etruscans: 15 Seasons And Counting

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P. Gregory Warden, University Distinguished Professor of Art History, has just celebrated the 15th anniversary of the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project, an Etruscan dig 20 miles northeast of Florence, Italy. The Etruscan civilization existed from 1000 B.C. to 50 B.C. and eventually was subsumed by the Romans. He serves as principal investigator and co-director of the project’s Poggio Colla Field School, an internationally recognized research training center in which SMU has participated since 1995 with the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Franklin and Marshall College. For the first time, the Meadows Museum at SMU displayed nearly 100 Etruscan artifacts discovered at Poggio Colla during the spring semester. In the following Q&A, Warden talks about Poggio Colla and its discoveries.


I was born in Florence and lived in Tuscany until I was 10 years old. My father was very interested in archaeology. For me, Mediterranean history is everywhere in Tuscany. Wherever you go in an Italian town, there are visible Roman ruins and Etruscan walls. It didn’t seem at all esoteric. I had worked all over the Mediterranean – I studied the Greeks in Libya and the Romans – but the Etruscans are my first love. Because we’re excavating in the valley where I grew up, that is a great advantage to me as a scholar. I knew the area intimately, it was archaeologically interesting and there was a lot to be discovered.


The Poggio Colla site spans most of Etruscan history, from 700 BCE to the town’s destruction by the Romans around 178 BCE, which makes it very rare. The Etruscans picked beautiful, easily defended hilltops for their settlements. As a result, many Etruscan sites are used as cities today. That means many have 2,000 years of other civilizations on top of Etruscan artifacts. Poggio Colla, however, represents an entire settlement – including tombs, a temple, a pottery factory and an artisan community. One significant discovery is the Podere Funghi complex, a terrace below the acropolis sanctuary, where we found a habitation area with kilns and artisan production. A surprise has been the discovery of a fortified sanctuary of a temple that was destroyed. The temple is revealing much new information about the Etruscans, who had a theocratic social structure and were considered the most religious peoples of the ancient Mediterranean.


We attract spectacular students who come from universities all around the United States. We train them on site in the actual physical aspects of archaeology. It takes about a week for them to get comfortable. Our students are our eyes and hands, excavating intelligently. They are finding primary sources such as ceramics, figural bronzes, the remains of a destroyed temple such as stone bases or parts of the foundation, and even gold jewelry and silver coins. They have to document everything carefully and be able to reconstruct where every piece was found. They also spend time in the onsite lab cataloging and processing all the finds that come down in great numbers. The students are surrounded by experts who are there to help them learn the process and who can mentor them. A few come back every year. (For more information on the 2009 dig, visit blog.smu.edu/StudentAdventures/archaeology _in_italy_2009.)


After 20 years, we’ll stop digging. We could dig for 100, there’s so much stuff around there. But the ethical thing to do is to stop at some point and publish. You have to publish your data before you excavate more. We’ve discovered so much in the lab that we didn’t know before, like the kinds of activities going on in the artisan area, the types of pottery being made. Questions like who destroyed the temple and why was it destroyed aren’t going to be answered by digging. We’re going to answer those questions by analyzing all the items that we found and their context.



We’re passionate about training people who care about the past and saving the Etruscan culture and heritage. That includes our students, because even though many of them won’t go on to become archaeologists, they will still understand why preservation is important. The project also brings in Italian high school students from the region to attend lectures and to excavate with us. When we leave, hundreds of students will know why this site is important and will let other people know, so that it won’t be destroyed. Italy’s cultural heritage is disappearing. We can’t preserve it all, but we do what we can. For more information: smu.edu/poggio