2001 TRENCH PC 18 Kate Topper, Field Supervisor Week 4: Kate Topper. Because of the four-day weekend, we have had only a few days of excavation since I wrote last week's report, and I do not have much new to report this week. We are currently in the middle of the last pass through stratum four and have come down upon stratum five or bedrock in most areas of the trench. We are continuing to find a good deal of coarseware and bucchero, some of it incised, but since all the pottery in this stratum has been washed down from the top of the hill, it is too far removed from its original depositional context to provide us with any useful information about the area we are excavating. View into Trench PC 18 during Week 4. In the absence of a useful context for the artifacts we are finding, we have been forced once again to focus on stratigraphy as the primary source of information about the history of our trench. Dr. Frank Vento, a geologist visiting from Clarion University, has provided us with some answers about stratum three, a stratum that has confused us for some time because of its uneven distribution across the trench and the mixed chronology of the artifacts found in it. Earlier in the season, I believed this stratum to be topsoil that was redeposited when the quarry pit next to our trench was dug, but over the past two weeks, this hypothesis has become increasingly problematic as we have noticed that the stratum overlaps, however faintly, with the area of the quarry pit that coincides with our trench. Furthermore, this explanation does not account for the high density of charcoal in this stratum. Dr. Vento, after visiting our trench, agreed that this stratum was topsoil, but he explained that it was simply old topsoil that was distributed unevenly because of its proximity to the bedrock that projects up along the west scarp of the trench. The first two strata, he explained, appear to have accumulated recently and over a short period of time, so it is likely that stratum three was exposed as recently as the beginning of the twentieth century and that thick concentration of charcoal is the result of the forest fires that occurred early in the century. Marlene Estabrooks, Josh Moran, and Kat Hinds in Trench PC 18. Since last Thursday, we have been noticing that stratum five, our only ancient stratum to date, rises towards the southwest corner of the trench. It is possible that the rise is simply caused by the proximity of this stratum to the bedrock that projects sharply in this corner of the trench; however, because we have found the majority of our domestic pottery --as well as two roof tiles and a possible foundation wall--in the southwest corner of the excavated portion of stratum five, I am beginning to wonder whether the rise of the unexcavated portion of this stratum may indicate the presence of a destroyed building beneath it. In any case, I expect to be ready to excavate stratum five in locus three within the next day or so, and I hope by next week to be able to provide a somewhat more conclusive explanation about what we are excavating in PC 18. Joshua Moran with Marlene Estabrooks in Trench PC 18. Lindsey Fine and Amy Leach telling stories and sifting for finds. Kat Hinds in Trench PC 18. Ashley Bennett with ceramic finds from Trench PC 18.   Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 - Final Report   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. Introduction | 2004 Field Season | Poggio Colla Field School | What’s New | Staff | Students Site History | Directors' Diaries | Student Diaries | Excavation Friends | Facilities | Conservation | Surveys Robert Belanger | Katherine Blanchard | Josh Moran | Caitlin Vacanti | Ivo van der Graaff | Robert Vander Poppen QuickTime VR | Site Set-Up | Dig Daily Life | Excavation Process | Field Manual | Lectures | Season's End Archives | Finds | Research Projects | Publications | Bibliography | Mugello Area | Home