2004 DIRECTORS' DIARIES P. Gregory Warden Michael Thomas Week 4 - Greg Warden - Looking at the Big Picture: We are now officially halfway through the 2004 campaign. Students and staff have returned from the mid-season break, and the trenches and labs are alive with activity. The weather this year has been exceptional, cool and dry. Morale is good. It is an appropriate time to reflect on our progress, on both the short-term and long-term goals of the season. Our short-term goal this year was to finish up the archaeological zone in the Podere Funghi and to begin to study the material from that area in order to prepare for publication. We also planned to make significant progress on the western end of the monumental complex on the arx. Furthermore, we hoped to continue to explicate, through survey or geoprospection, the broader picture of the diachronic settlement pattern of the site, that is, to reconstruct the physical layout of the settlement from the 7th to the 2nd centuries BC. Left to right: Brad Schneider, Greg Warden, Robert Belanger, Dario Monna, and Jess Galloway discussing excavation around the kilns in the Podere Funghi. In past seasons our "best-laid plans" fell by the wayside. There are always surprises. There is always the unexpected, especially at the beginning of an archaeological project when archaeologists are in the unhappy situation of the proverbial blind man trying to feel the shape of an elephant. But now, it's different. It may be that in our tenth year of excavation we are finally able to understand the nature of the site, or it may just be good luck, but this year, I am happy to report, we are right on track. The Podere Funghi, an area that began as a kind of salvage archaeology project, where we were one step ahead of the plow that was churning up pottery in an otherwise unprepossessing field, has produced at least two phases of occupation. In the first phase we have an area of intensive ceramic production, and we are lucky enough to have the remains of a number of pottery kilns. What is remarkable here is that we also have the midden (excavated in the late 90s) where masses of pottery, probably the discards, were dumped. This material is being studied in the laboratory by Prof. Ann Steiner and her students, and its eventual publication will allow us to document a rare slice of Etruscan life, the everyday work of everyday Etruscans. At a later date the Podere Funghi became a residential area, and the structure that we have excavated over the past four or five years becomes ever more impressive from season to season. In the first years of excavation we thought it a simple rectangular building, a shed or small farmhouse, but as excavation progressed we realized that it has impressive foundations, handsomely built, deep, and quite massive, far better made than the Phase 3 foundations on the arx. It may have been a two story structure with a porch on the east side, not large, but certainly impressive in height and placement. Was it a farm or a residence? That's the question that we will try to answer as we study the finds that came from this area, and their placement in the architectural-historical matrix. I remember being told years ago, when I was learning about black-and-white photography, that as much of the art of photography takes places in the darkroom as when taking the photograph. The same is true in archaeology, for the work that goes on in the laboratory is easily as important as the excavation. The field work in the Podere Funghi is drawing to a close (I shouldn't really say this, for who knows what surprises await us on the morrow), but there are years of work, of patient study and reconstruction, before we can produce the final publication of this archaeological zone. View of trenches in the Podere Funghi during Week 4.   Panoramic view of some of the trenches open on the arx of Poggio Colla during the 2004 field season. The arx is a far more complicated area, with four large trenches that are all producing new information. What emerges is a somewhat better sense of the monumental complex in its latest iteration, what we have called Phase 3, with some small hints of the second phase as well. Most interesting, for me, is the evidence from Trench 20, an area excavated but not finished in 2000. Here we are uncovering architecture from the very northern edge of the poggio that helps explain the relationship of the two northern walls (which we thought "terracing" walls when we first encountered them and that run much of the length of the arx) to the monumental building. It now looks as if these walls are much more than retaining or terracing walls. Also of interest is the exceptional bucchero from the lowest stratum of Trench 20, a heavy carbonized soil that is chock full of seventh and early sixth century pottery of remarkable quality. We were looking at these finds with our students last night, as part of a presentation of the material culture of the site in which we try to familiarize the students with the variety of finds that have been produced by ten years of excavation. One of the issues that we discussed, as we looked at tables laid out with exceptional bucchero, is the remarkable wealth the site in its first phase, the late Orientalizing and early Archaic periods. Yet it is so difficult to envision and reconstruct from the archaeological remains the physical appearance of the early settlement, the shape and resonance of the place. This is why archaeology can be such a frustrating field, for the sherds of pottery, the sandstone blocks and column bases, the occasional bronze fragment, give us only a hint of a vital and flourishing community at the dawn of Etruscan history. We know it was there but can say almost nothing "real" about it. Was it a sanctuary? Was it an elite settlement? Why did it exist? View of Trench PC 20 from the south. These are the larger questions that we must ask ourselves after ten years. We plan ten more years of excavation before we undertake final publication. The choices that we make in the next few years are crucial, for archaeology must necessarily proceed at a snail's pace, and ten more years of excavation at such a large site will only document a very small percentage of the whole. Our real goal, from the very beginning, was to document the life and death of an Etruscan settlement that fortuitously spans most of Etruscan history. Such an enterprise is a truly singular thing. This is where broader study of settlement pattern, through survey, and through carefully selected excavation, will be important. This week we have been joined by our good friend, Dr. Dario Monna of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, who is doing resistivity studies in some of the fields in the proximity of the Podere Funghi, where there is the possibility of finding a necropolis coeval with the Podere Funghi habitation. Dr. Monna has generously offered to train two of our students and to loan us equipment so that we can continue to perform geoprospection over the next few weeks. We are hoping to garner data that will allow us to plan better for the future. Our temporal and financial resources are finite, and our goals are unfortunately much larger than our resources. After ten years, it is time to think of the big picture. Our geophysicist, Dr. Dario Monna of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche working with Laura Crowley and Aaron Bartels near the Podere Funghi. View of Poggio Colla Trenches PC 22, 23, and 25 from the west.   View of several of the 2004 Poggio Colla trenches from the south.   Robert Vander Poppen and Greg Warden on Poggio Colla.   Week 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6 Week 7 - Final Report Special Page Director, Gregory Warden gwarden@mail.smu.edu Director, Michael Thomas michael.thomas@tufts.edu While the team is in Italy during the summer field season, send e-mail to: mvap3@dada.it To email an individual on the team, enter the person's last name in the subject heading. Excavation house phone: 055-844-9834, or, when calling from the US: 011-39-55-844-9834. 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