Mid Season Update

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