There isn't much to share today about the site. We're still excavating our bones - it takes a long time! I dug out a trench that we're supposing was used for drainage for the cathedral during the medieval times, but we're not sure about that yet. Tomorrow and Friday are our last working days, and part of that time has to be used for clean up and securing the site, because no more work will happen until next summer, so we won't be uncovering anything new now, just finishing up the old stuff.
The weekend was fun. Two other people and I rented a car and drove to Volterra, San Gimignano, Siena, and Radda in Chianti. I'll tell you more about this trip when I get home. It was fun, except for when we found out the hotel's website reflected the incorrect address and we were sitting at a closed gate on a dirt road with no one around on Saturday night. Gladys (my GPS) was dying and the one Italian cell phone we had was almost dead, too. It was almost an "OMG, what are we going to do now" moment, but it all turned out ok in the end.
That's all for now, it's almost time to go to dinner. This is our last dinner as a complete group at our usual restaurant. Tomorrow night some of us are going to a special dinner at another place. Some of the students have opted not to go because we'll have to pay for this one. On Friday night, some of the townspeople of Altopascio want to cook for us. That will be fun.
There are three elderly ladies that are sitting on a brick wall every night when we walk home from the restaurant (I calculated that we walk a minimum of 3 miles every day!). Last night another woman from my group and I stopped to talk to them...or try to, I should say! It's too bad I didn't realize they were willing to talk to someone who speaks horrible Italian - I would have spent some time with them trying to improve my fairly sorry skills!
Ok. This is probably my last post. I'm looking forward to seeing you all, or at least talking to you very soon sonI can hear what's been up with you over the last month!
Until then,
MB
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Friday, August 12, 2011
August 11
Good news! We found a midieval skeleton! Unfortunately, it's a secondary burial, meaning that the bones have been moved from their original site, but they're the most complete bones we've found yet. Most of the day yesterday and all day today was spent on excavation and removal of these bones, and we hope to finish it up on Tuesday (Monday is a holiday of some sort, so we're not working).
I spent all day today picking, shoving, and scraping, and I'm exhausted. On Tuesday I'll have my turn with the bones.
Tomorrow I'm going to Siena for the weekend with a couple of other people. I'm looking forward to spending a few days with only two others instead of 22 others!
'Til Tuesday,
MB
I spent all day today picking, shoving, and scraping, and I'm exhausted. On Tuesday I'll have my turn with the bones.
Tomorrow I'm going to Siena for the weekend with a couple of other people. I'm looking forward to spending a few days with only two others instead of 22 others!
'Til Tuesday,
MB
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
August 8, 9, 10
Sunday in Firenze was good. David was spectacular! So was the Uffizi museum. Saw some of the masters. Two museums, some souvenir shopping and I headed for home.
Buckets of rain Sunday night, so the site was muddy Monday morning. Apparently that kind of rain isn't good for removing bones, so site 2000 had some issues to deal with (they're the ones that have all the burials). We, at site 1000, wouldn't know since we didn't have any bones! At least the wet soil was easier to remove. With the rain came cooler temperatures - thank God! We were roasting!
Notice that I said we "didn't" have any bones? On Tuesday, bones! At least a few. I found a partial occipital bone (back of head), and a partial mandible. I got to get them ready for removal, and then I removed them from the soil. It was very exciting!
Today, we found even more bones. Again, it's not a primary burial, but a secondary one, and as such, there are only a few bones, and they're not articulated with other bones of the skeleton. But it's something. We have some good bones this time - femur, humerus, part of the pelvis, and a couple of tarsals so far. It's given us all hope that all our picking might not be for naught.
We removed several more inches of soil today. I think we're going to push hard this week to get as low as we can, because until we do that, we're probably not going to find the medieval burials we're looking for.
Today we had a lecture from Dr. Forniciari, a professor from the University of Pisa, and one of the two directors of our project (the other is Dr. Clark Larson). He lectured on the study of the remains of the Medici family, specifically pathologies.
On a lighter note, did I mention that our 20 women share four toilets? Two of them are squatters! I actually like them better than the sit-down toilets, for sanitary reasons. Is that too much information?
I would like to end this post on a note of complaint. My hands hurt. My feet hurt. My knees hurt. So does my back. I have callouses on my hands, mosquito bites on every part of my body. The conversations of a bunch of 20-somethings could possibly drive me crazy before the trip is over! Today it was "which one of us would we eat if we had to eat one of us?" Please remind me about why I thought this trip was a good idea! :-)
Thanks for listening,
The 50+ woman who thinks she's only 30.
P.S. In spite of my complaining, I AM having fun!
Saturday, August 6, 2011
August 7, 2011
Thank you all for your comments to my earlier blog postings. It's so nice to hear voices from home.
Just a quick update - I'm in Florence and don't have my keyboard with me, so typing is slower than I would like.
Florence is beautiful, but crowded, and very hot! It was 79 degrees at 11:00 last night, so I suspect that it reached mid 90's yesterday. And it's humid. Yikes! I chose yesterday to climb the 464 steps to the top of the bell tower. The view over the city was beautiful. I wonder if the people I was dropping sweat on as I leaned over the edge to look down thought it was raining!
Besides other sights, I sat on the Piazzale Michaelangelo and had a glass of wine while looking over the city (I saw quite a bit of the top of Florence), had dinner, and went to bed. I was exhausted. So here it is, Sunday morning, and I've had the first night of more than 4 hours of interrupted sleep I've had in two weeks! No bells, no snoring, no talking, and no bathroom light in my eyes! 7 hours of sleep - a luxury! I would stay in bed longer, but I have to go see Michaeangelo's David soon. This is a hard life!
To answer some of your questions, no Jess, unfortunately I can't take pictures of the site or the bones. We'll have to make do with the pictures that are on the Field School site for now. I'll see if I can get some loaded to Picasa soon. No, Manny, Shelby cannot have any of the bones I find. She'll have to stick with the boring old animal variety. Dr. Bouton, you were right about the bug bites! I have more mosquito bites than I can count. I've been resisting the bug spray, but I'm going to have to give in - I look like a pink-spotted leopard! As for the hangover, so far, no problem there. I can't even imagine working on this heat with a hangover! Jim, I'm sure Georgia IS like another country! Aren't you glad we live in the country of Californa?
As for work, no real news there. We've removed up to 15 inches of soil from our site now. Unfortunately, I expect we have another 15 inches to go before we hit any burials. Hopefully we can speed up the process a little. One thin layer of dirt at a time takes a long Time, because after each layer is removed, the surface has to be cleaned (can you imagine cleaning dirt?), measurements have to be taken, and photos, before we can start to remove the next layer.
Dr. Larsen is gone now, but before he left, he gave a lecture to the townspeople about a project he had in Georgia and how it relates to the project we're doing in Badia Pozzeveri. They seemed to enjoy it, and are happy that we're here. One man brings us fresh fruit everyday!
That's all for now. It's time for breakfast. I didn't mean to write a book when I started this!
More later,
The Body Snatcher (thanks, Jess!)
Just a quick update - I'm in Florence and don't have my keyboard with me, so typing is slower than I would like.
Florence is beautiful, but crowded, and very hot! It was 79 degrees at 11:00 last night, so I suspect that it reached mid 90's yesterday. And it's humid. Yikes! I chose yesterday to climb the 464 steps to the top of the bell tower. The view over the city was beautiful. I wonder if the people I was dropping sweat on as I leaned over the edge to look down thought it was raining!
Besides other sights, I sat on the Piazzale Michaelangelo and had a glass of wine while looking over the city (I saw quite a bit of the top of Florence), had dinner, and went to bed. I was exhausted. So here it is, Sunday morning, and I've had the first night of more than 4 hours of interrupted sleep I've had in two weeks! No bells, no snoring, no talking, and no bathroom light in my eyes! 7 hours of sleep - a luxury! I would stay in bed longer, but I have to go see Michaeangelo's David soon. This is a hard life!
To answer some of your questions, no Jess, unfortunately I can't take pictures of the site or the bones. We'll have to make do with the pictures that are on the Field School site for now. I'll see if I can get some loaded to Picasa soon. No, Manny, Shelby cannot have any of the bones I find. She'll have to stick with the boring old animal variety. Dr. Bouton, you were right about the bug bites! I have more mosquito bites than I can count. I've been resisting the bug spray, but I'm going to have to give in - I look like a pink-spotted leopard! As for the hangover, so far, no problem there. I can't even imagine working on this heat with a hangover! Jim, I'm sure Georgia IS like another country! Aren't you glad we live in the country of Californa?
As for work, no real news there. We've removed up to 15 inches of soil from our site now. Unfortunately, I expect we have another 15 inches to go before we hit any burials. Hopefully we can speed up the process a little. One thin layer of dirt at a time takes a long Time, because after each layer is removed, the surface has to be cleaned (can you imagine cleaning dirt?), measurements have to be taken, and photos, before we can start to remove the next layer.
Dr. Larsen is gone now, but before he left, he gave a lecture to the townspeople about a project he had in Georgia and how it relates to the project we're doing in Badia Pozzeveri. They seemed to enjoy it, and are happy that we're here. One man brings us fresh fruit everyday!
That's all for now. It's time for breakfast. I didn't mean to write a book when I started this!
More later,
The Body Snatcher (thanks, Jess!)
Monday, August 1, 2011
JULY 29, 30, 31, and August 1
So - after I finished my last blog entry at about 1:00, I got ready for bed. I went in the bathroom and made the mistake of closing the stall door behind me. Boy was I surprised when the door didn't open! So I pounded and yelled, and finally someone heard me and let me out - thank goodness!
Let's start with the Italian words for the day - formiche (ants), api (bees), ragni (spiders). Does that give you any idea of what my days are like now? Regarding ants, I now know the words for ants, anthills, and pins-n-needles, which is a dirivitive of the word for ants. I can carry on a whole language using ant-words!
Friday was another day of removing another layer of dirt. There isn't a bone in my body that doesn't hurt! Friday night, though, was lovely. I took a shower and then went across the street to the bar and had a glass of wine before dinner. It was wonderful - sitting outside in the sunshine in Italy, drinking a glass of chianti and watching the world go by.
On Saturday I took the train to Pisa with one of my field schooHenares. The Leaning Tower is much more impressive than I expected. It's amazing that it is still standing, given the degree to which it's tilting. I saw the tower, the cathedral (which was beautiful), the Duomo, which wasn't as good as I had hoped, but it was interesting. We also saw the Camposanto, which is a cemetery - very cool. There were tombs in the floor, similar to what we see in some of the old churches, and a chapel with ossuaries. In one of the ossuaries the skull was facing outwards, so it looked like he was yelling, "let me out of here!" I also went into a couple of museums. We met up with some other class friends for lunch, and then after some roaming around, we headed to Lucca.
Lucca was fun because after dinner, when we were heading to the train station to catch the 2nd to the last train back to Altopascio, we saw some street performers doing an act with their bicycles, singing and dancing. As they finished up their song and left the piazza, they motioned for the crowd to follow them, so we did. They performed in the next piazza, motioned for us to follow again, and we did. We did that through their whole performance, which was fun but by the time they finished, we had missed our 2nd to the last train, and so we took the last train home...or so we thought. As it turned out, we took the wrong train and ended up on the coast in Viareggio, which was about 40 miles away from where we wanted to be. The problem was that there were no more trains that were going to Altopascio that night. We were virtualy stranded in Viareggio at midnight. To make a long story very short, I paid for a cab to take us home - and let me just say it was not cheap!
Sunday I took a walk around Altopascio and then we rode our bikes to Lucca and made another tour of the city.
So now it's Monday and what did we do? We removed another layer of dirt from our site. We did expose the rest of another wall, and we excavated a hole (a round one) that we decided must have once held a tree. However, since we found a gun shell casing in the hole, it was obvious that it was a modern hole and not anything we needed to be concerned about in the future. We also started removing the few bones that we knew were in the site when we started the excavation. The bad news is that so far we haven't found any other bones of any significance.
One other thing - Dr. Clark Larson, who "wrote the book on bioarchaeology" and is currently teaching at Ohio State is here this week. It's going to be really interesting hearing him lecture about the projects he's working on. We've all met him now, and he's a very nice man. This is almost the equivalent of meeting Dr. Leakey!
I sit here wishing the bar across the street was open, but apparently a lot of restaurants close on Mondays in Italy. I'm going to bed early tonight, because tomorrow promises to be another hard day.
Thanks for taking the time to read my rambles,
MB
Let's start with the Italian words for the day - formiche (ants), api (bees), ragni (spiders). Does that give you any idea of what my days are like now? Regarding ants, I now know the words for ants, anthills, and pins-n-needles, which is a dirivitive of the word for ants. I can carry on a whole language using ant-words!
Friday was another day of removing another layer of dirt. There isn't a bone in my body that doesn't hurt! Friday night, though, was lovely. I took a shower and then went across the street to the bar and had a glass of wine before dinner. It was wonderful - sitting outside in the sunshine in Italy, drinking a glass of chianti and watching the world go by.
On Saturday I took the train to Pisa with one of my field schooHenares. The Leaning Tower is much more impressive than I expected. It's amazing that it is still standing, given the degree to which it's tilting. I saw the tower, the cathedral (which was beautiful), the Duomo, which wasn't as good as I had hoped, but it was interesting. We also saw the Camposanto, which is a cemetery - very cool. There were tombs in the floor, similar to what we see in some of the old churches, and a chapel with ossuaries. In one of the ossuaries the skull was facing outwards, so it looked like he was yelling, "let me out of here!" I also went into a couple of museums. We met up with some other class friends for lunch, and then after some roaming around, we headed to Lucca.
Lucca was fun because after dinner, when we were heading to the train station to catch the 2nd to the last train back to Altopascio, we saw some street performers doing an act with their bicycles, singing and dancing. As they finished up their song and left the piazza, they motioned for the crowd to follow them, so we did. They performed in the next piazza, motioned for us to follow again, and we did. We did that through their whole performance, which was fun but by the time they finished, we had missed our 2nd to the last train, and so we took the last train home...or so we thought. As it turned out, we took the wrong train and ended up on the coast in Viareggio, which was about 40 miles away from where we wanted to be. The problem was that there were no more trains that were going to Altopascio that night. We were virtualy stranded in Viareggio at midnight. To make a long story very short, I paid for a cab to take us home - and let me just say it was not cheap!
Sunday I took a walk around Altopascio and then we rode our bikes to Lucca and made another tour of the city.
So now it's Monday and what did we do? We removed another layer of dirt from our site. We did expose the rest of another wall, and we excavated a hole (a round one) that we decided must have once held a tree. However, since we found a gun shell casing in the hole, it was obvious that it was a modern hole and not anything we needed to be concerned about in the future. We also started removing the few bones that we knew were in the site when we started the excavation. The bad news is that so far we haven't found any other bones of any significance.
One other thing - Dr. Clark Larson, who "wrote the book on bioarchaeology" and is currently teaching at Ohio State is here this week. It's going to be really interesting hearing him lecture about the projects he's working on. We've all met him now, and he's a very nice man. This is almost the equivalent of meeting Dr. Leakey!
I sit here wishing the bar across the street was open, but apparently a lot of restaurants close on Mondays in Italy. I'm going to bed early tonight, because tomorrow promises to be another hard day.
Thanks for taking the time to read my rambles,
MB
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