Blog 4
It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to sit down and write something for this blog, but I suppose that is indicative of the fact that I’m having far too wonderful a time here to be willing to sit down in front of a computer. But I’ve got a spare moment, a computer, and nothing better to do right now, so I might as well catch up on blogging.
Things at Poggio Colla are essentially the same as usual – lots of work and lots of fun. Next week is the last week of digging on site, so we in the lab are getting a lot of finds every day and are frantically trying to keep up with the finds. The life of an object here at Poggio Colla is pretty crazy, and we are constantly trying to keep track of the things we find. Here’s a brief summary of what happens to the artifacts found on site:
1. Someone trowels away some dirt, revealing the find. The Trench Supervisor writes the find up in his or her notebook, makes a preliminary sketch, and collects all the data.
2. All the day’s finds are brought to the Find Tracker (Laura, the other Lab Fellow), who compiles a list of them on a computer.
3. The finds then move to Conservation, where they are cleaned up and made pretty.
4. Then they come to my lab, where the Director of Research and the Lab Fellows decide which ones should become catalogued finds and which are non-catalogued. This decision is based largely on what the object can tell us – if it is dateable, stylistically diagnostic, unusual for Poggio Colla, or valuable in the context of its trench, we keep it. Of course, we also keep it if it’s darling.
5. The Cataloguer (that’s me!), writes up the catalogued finds into our official catalogue. This document tells you everything about an object, from where in the trench it was located, to what exactly it is, to where it is stored now.
6. Catalogued pieces are sent to Photography and Drawing to be documented.
7. Finished pieces are housed and stored, some in the museum basement, and some in our lab.
It’s a pretty intensive process, and also one filled with room for error. A big part of my role here is to work not only on error prevention for this year’s objects, but also on fixing the errors (or, as we call it, “solving mysteries”) caused by confusion in previous years. The good news is that I feel confident that our system has just gotten to a point of being efficient and fine-tuned, and that at the end of the summer I will leave the finds (and the system) in better shape than I found them. And that’s all I can ask of a job or of myself – to make things a little better in the world.
Besides my lovely times at Poggio Colla, I’ve been doing a bit of travelling. I spent last weekend in Venice, and it was the best weekend I’ve had since coming here. Saturday was the Feast of the Redeemer, which celebrates the end of the plague in Venice (which suffered terribly from it – unsurprisingly, considering the environment) and is essentially Venetian 4th of July. We watched the fireworks display – the best I’ve ever seen – from the Piazza San Marco and finished the evening with a late night stroll along the canals. I was also fortunate enough to be there for the Biannale, a biannual event of international contemporary art. Many countries participate in this, sending an artist to represent their country in this event. I saw some truly incredible pieces, some of which are in my new Picasa album. My favorites hailed from the Ukraine (“The Steppes of Dreamers”) and Iceland (“The End”).
I spent the last few days of this week walking around the Mugello Valley, the area I’m living in. It’s been lovely – this place is simply gorgeous. My friend and co-worker, Sarah Bon-Harper and I made the trek across the valley on a Peach Pilgrimage – she had discovered a hidden farmstead selling Maria Bianca Peaches, the best that I have ever tasted – and brought back a whole crate of them for my house. It was a magically few days, discovering parts of the valley that I haven’t seen yet.
More updates coming….eventually, at least!
Also, new photos up in my Picasa albums - http://picasaweb.google.com/isaisastc/Vicchio# and http://picasaweb.google.com/isaisastc/Venice#
Isa
Monday, July 27, 2009
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Viccio and Day to Day
Fri, July 3
I had planned on doing another entry about my time in Florence, but now that seems like far too much typing to do on a beautiful day in Italy. Also, it can be pretty well summed up in my photo album on Picasa.
I made it to Vicchio on Friday, when I showed my dad around my temporary home and then waved him off as he hopped on a train back to Florence. Vicchio is a beautiful little town in Tuscany’s Mugello Valley where the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project is based. I’m living in a house called Guardia with the other members of the staff. Our home overlooks the wheat fields, beyond which another hill rises where the students’ house Vigna is. On all sides the horizon is studded with mountains. Looking at these it is impossible not to think of the towns that once were situated on them, that are now just sites. Our site Poggio Colla is one of these, and visible to the north is Monte Giove, another likely temple site where excavation is just beginning. It is remarkable how much there is to discover in the region – I think there are around 7 sites in this valley.
I absolutely love being here – I had forgotten how fantastic life is at Poggio Colla. The people here are almost all clever and fun to be with, the views are spectacular, and the food cannot be beaten. Dinners here, almost without exception, consist of a primi pasta, a fabulous meat dish (last night was chingiali, wild boar), and fresh fruit for dessert. Plus Toscana or Chianti wine, of course.
My days here are certainly different from last year. As a student, I spent my time up on site, digging in the heat and the dirt. It was a lot of fun, but this year is turning out to be just as good, if not better. I work in the Selve lab, just down the hill from Guardia, where many of our pottery finds and a few other catalogued artifacts are stored. The perks of lab work include an hour of sleep more than the hill folks, a soft chair, staying clean, and playing with pottery. It can be a little sad to have to get my information about what’s happening on site indirectly, but I think it’s a good trade off. My job for the past week has been fairly simple: the other lab fellow, Laura, and I are working on checking that our inventory is accurate. There are approximately 3000 artifacts stored in the lab, and Laura and I are going through them one by one and checking their physical tags against their cards on the computer. There are a lot of small errors to correct, and a couple reclassifications to do. It definitely brings out my perfectionist tendencies, but I love getting to handle all the finds. We have so many beautiful pieces that I had never seen before, and by now I think I have seen every kind of stamp on site. Next week I will move on to my big project: preparing the objects from the Podere Funghi, our other site, for publication. As yet I don’t really know what that entails….I guess I’ll find out!
The artifacts in our inventory run the gamut from ceramics to glass to bone to metal, but I spend most of my time with the pottery. We essentially have three kinds at Poggio Colla: coarseware, fineware, black glaze, and bucchero. Bucchero is the oldest and fanciest, the kind that your often find in fancy shapes with decoration. Black glaze is later, but can also be fancy. It can come in painted or stamped varieties (imagine Attic red-figure, though we don’t have anything that fancy). Fine and coarse ware are often more quotidian – the descriptors refer to the clay, and you can guess which is a bit fancier. I have a soft spot for coarseware, perhaps because I think of it as underdog pottery – the ugly stuff that no one really cares about. But it certainly doesn’t hurt that coarseware can be massive, and big stuff is always fun.
I’m planning on a mellow weekend – spend Saturday in Florence and Sunday at home. The big plan is to get to the Brancacci Chapel, where Masaccio’s most famous frescoes are. But for now, just sit in the Tuscan afternoon, watch the chickens, and hang out with friends!
I had planned on doing another entry about my time in Florence, but now that seems like far too much typing to do on a beautiful day in Italy. Also, it can be pretty well summed up in my photo album on Picasa.
I made it to Vicchio on Friday, when I showed my dad around my temporary home and then waved him off as he hopped on a train back to Florence. Vicchio is a beautiful little town in Tuscany’s Mugello Valley where the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project is based. I’m living in a house called Guardia with the other members of the staff. Our home overlooks the wheat fields, beyond which another hill rises where the students’ house Vigna is. On all sides the horizon is studded with mountains. Looking at these it is impossible not to think of the towns that once were situated on them, that are now just sites. Our site Poggio Colla is one of these, and visible to the north is Monte Giove, another likely temple site where excavation is just beginning. It is remarkable how much there is to discover in the region – I think there are around 7 sites in this valley.
I absolutely love being here – I had forgotten how fantastic life is at Poggio Colla. The people here are almost all clever and fun to be with, the views are spectacular, and the food cannot be beaten. Dinners here, almost without exception, consist of a primi pasta, a fabulous meat dish (last night was chingiali, wild boar), and fresh fruit for dessert. Plus Toscana or Chianti wine, of course.
My days here are certainly different from last year. As a student, I spent my time up on site, digging in the heat and the dirt. It was a lot of fun, but this year is turning out to be just as good, if not better. I work in the Selve lab, just down the hill from Guardia, where many of our pottery finds and a few other catalogued artifacts are stored. The perks of lab work include an hour of sleep more than the hill folks, a soft chair, staying clean, and playing with pottery. It can be a little sad to have to get my information about what’s happening on site indirectly, but I think it’s a good trade off. My job for the past week has been fairly simple: the other lab fellow, Laura, and I are working on checking that our inventory is accurate. There are approximately 3000 artifacts stored in the lab, and Laura and I are going through them one by one and checking their physical tags against their cards on the computer. There are a lot of small errors to correct, and a couple reclassifications to do. It definitely brings out my perfectionist tendencies, but I love getting to handle all the finds. We have so many beautiful pieces that I had never seen before, and by now I think I have seen every kind of stamp on site. Next week I will move on to my big project: preparing the objects from the Podere Funghi, our other site, for publication. As yet I don’t really know what that entails….I guess I’ll find out!
The artifacts in our inventory run the gamut from ceramics to glass to bone to metal, but I spend most of my time with the pottery. We essentially have three kinds at Poggio Colla: coarseware, fineware, black glaze, and bucchero. Bucchero is the oldest and fanciest, the kind that your often find in fancy shapes with decoration. Black glaze is later, but can also be fancy. It can come in painted or stamped varieties (imagine Attic red-figure, though we don’t have anything that fancy). Fine and coarse ware are often more quotidian – the descriptors refer to the clay, and you can guess which is a bit fancier. I have a soft spot for coarseware, perhaps because I think of it as underdog pottery – the ugly stuff that no one really cares about. But it certainly doesn’t hurt that coarseware can be massive, and big stuff is always fun.
I’m planning on a mellow weekend – spend Saturday in Florence and Sunday at home. The big plan is to get to the Brancacci Chapel, where Masaccio’s most famous frescoes are. But for now, just sit in the Tuscan afternoon, watch the chickens, and hang out with friends!
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