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!