More Answers
Ooh! I got questions from people, and only just now discovered them after a long time of not looking at my blog. keep the questions coming and i'll keep answering (assuming i actually check this thing once in a while). So here are some answers:

What condition is pompeii in now?
well,that's a multifaceted topic. two thirds of the city have been uncovered down to their pre-volcano (the 79ad eruption) level. the city was first excaved in the 1700s when information gathering was not the goal and finding pretty things that look good in a recently classicaly-interest-minded court of Spain foyer. So massive uncovering and artifact recovery efforts were put into effect to the detriment of the city. then it was left to weathering and tourism and dogs and earthquakes and WWII allied bomb attacks for 300 years (at least in some areas). so the majority of the wall paintings, once as brilliant and vivid as the day they were painted, have faded to near nothing. walls are crumbling, plants are creeping around and through ruins. which is not to say that conservation attempts have not been made. several rounds of well intentioned flurries of 'saving the ruins' have happened, but you never know how things will weather over time and effect the ruins in the long run.
for instance, one such attempt was made at keeping wall plaster stuck to walls. the stuff kinda peels off the walls after years of rain seeps between and this effort involved knocking the crumbling adhesive plaster out from between the painted plaster and the wall, and pouring new concrete between to restick it. good idea, right? in theory. the problem is that after a little time, the compositions of the modern concrete and the ancient plaster and mortar reacted to one another and caused everything to fall apart at a faster rate than if the plaster had been left to peel off. good idea, bad practice.
another example is lintels. a lintel is the beam across the top of a doorway, usually made of wood in ancient times. so in the course of the time between volcano and now, the wood (of course) biodegraded. to keep walls from falling in on their doorways, concrete lintels reinforced with iron rebar were put in the place of the once-wooden lintels. again, a good idea. but the iron rusts and corrodes and breaks the concrete apart, bringing down the wall.
then there are the lesser, simpler tries that also have failed. clear plastic coverings over the remaining wall paintings to keep tourists from touching (VERY BAD for ancient paint) or graffiti-ing them which end up encouraging condensation which degrades them.
But! the city is no less fanominal for all of this, and unless you make note of these things yearly, not noticeable unless you have something to compare.
the best way to preserve anything is to leave it buried. the dirt protects everything from weathering exposure and tourists and the like. so in the mid 90's, a law was passed barring the uncover of any as-yet unexcavated portion of the ancient city. this means only the still-buried-in-volcanic-debris areas (about a third still untouched). this does not affect sub-79ad excavation, the type that the AAPP, among others, is doing. and concervation efforts are getting better, or at least more considered.

is pompeii still being worked on???? How far is the excavation???
yes, definitely. see above. one third of the city completely untouched, two thirds uncovered from 79ad volcanic debris, but only rarely excaved below 79ad floor level to find development, change and purpose. so it'll be a LONG time before the city is 'done', if ever.

I went on a tour of Pompeii in the summer of 2004. I guess I got distracted when our tour guide got to this part because I can't quite remember the details, but is it true that the people of Pompeii were much shorter than we are today?
well, that's sort of true of most peoples of pre-modern medicine and nutritional understanding. but they weren't hugely shorter than people today. shorter, yes. they also didnt live as long (on average) as we do today, again for the medical reasons. but it's not as if they were pygmies in comparison to us. modern italians are shorter on average than americans too, so some things dont change.
you also very very much cannot take tourguides in pompeii seriously. i could devote an entire post to the crazy stories tour guides tell tourists. hmmm, maybe i will.
- posted by Claire @ 9:27 PM 0 comments

 
Life at Spartacus
About camp life (finally). The project as a whole lives in tents at a camp site called Camping Spartacus. The Campground is located on the Via Plinio, one of the main roads of modern Pompei. European campgrounds work differently than American ones, or atleast to the degree that I've been exposed to them. They're more like camper stops, I guess. As you enter Spartacus, you come down a paved ramp that leads into the campsite proper, and splits off into three little paved roads that give access to the mildly tree-lined tent spaces. Little areas of tent spaces are divided off by bushes and azaleas and the like, making little compounds for tent communities (we call them insulae, latin for blocks in the sense of city blocks). The AAPP takes over about half of Spartacus for the summer.

At the back of the campsite is a restaurant/pizzaria and bar/market area. The restaurant is owned by the same family that runs the campsite (Orlando, his wife, his parents, and kids, along with several other family members, the connection between I'm not entirely clear on). The restaurant is where the project has all its meals. Breakfast is a buffet-style spread of cereal, bread, some meat and cheese, a lot of fruit and yogurt. Lunch is usually some pasta dish or rice or something of that nature. Dinner is complicated and not really worth going into.

The bar (so it's called) is where we spend the vast majority of our time when not on site. It's a little building with a bar counter that serves all manner of things from beer to cappuccini to basic packaged food. Out front of it is a grape trellis-covered seating area with tables which we take over enmasse at 6pm when we come down off the hill.
- posted by Claire @ 9:24 PM 0 comments

 
so the thing with italy...

most of my... obsession is probably a good word... with italy is just a feeling, which is hard to explain. i feel more at ease
there, looser in my walk somehow. maybe it has something to do with being on a dig and being in better shape while i'm there, but i had the same feeling when i was there on my semester abroad and certainly wasnt doing manual labor then. i feel healthier. and i've been trying to figure out what about it triggers that, to replicate it here, but i havent found it yet. and i feel easier in the culture. maybe that has to do with not understanding much of what's being said around me. i dont know. or maybe because i like travelling alone, not having to worry about whether another person is entertained or doing what they wanted to get done in the day of wandering around. i went to rome for a total of about 6 hours at the end of the season. mostly, i went to get my film developed. i loafed around the streets of the vatican. sat at the base of a column in st. peters square and wrote. moved to the pantheon and sat at the base of a column there with a fanta and watched tourists follow their tourguide around, she with a silk sunflower attached to the end of a pole, held aloft for her flock to follow through the crowd. i dont like being a tourist. the conspicuousness of it. i dont like having a mapped out journey that i should follow with commentary and minute to minute itinerary. i have an aversion to tourist offices and visitor centers. i like being part of the culture and not having people expect me to be american and all the stuff that implies. life is more natural when you blend in. a little of the same is true of museum experiences. i dont read the explanatory bits and signs pretty much anymore. the naples museum has become "mine" since my group departed from following the directors around, listening to the academic explanations of things and took to imitating statuary. i feel at home there now, regardless of its definite museum-ness.

other things about italy. there's not much asphalt. many of the roads, even quite a few of the main thorofares of big cities, are paved with big stone blocks, cut square with little pick marks in them for traction (i imagine). sidewalks are paved with little cubic bricks in different colors and made into designs. most are wide and designed for ambulation of large groups cause it is not an infrequency for people to go just walk around downtown in the evening. the main street in sorrento gets shutdown to traffic in the evenings to accomodate passegiata, the nightly parade of pedestrian window shoppers who are out in hordes with their baby buggies and whole families. this is also true of pompeii on saturday nights. actually, i think it's true of most of italy. at about 9, everyone takes to the streets, the thing to do is go wander around in your latest euro-outfit and see and be seen by everyone. meet friends. just hang out with people.

driving. there are few hard and fast laws (or at least it seems that way, i've never gotten a hold of an actual italian DMV rule book, whereas i have one for the states). yet people know how to drive with more courtesy and consideration for other drivers than here. maybe this is due to the lack of big cars and the more likely possibility of getting killed if you get hit cause the cars are all fiats or are vespas and not cars at all. either way, highway driving is as it should be: you drive in the right lane. no exceptions. if you're going faster than the guy in front of you, you put your blinker on and pass, only to return to the right lane as soon as you have passed said person. no one drives in the left lane except for passing, or if you're driving REALLY fast. that whole phenomenon of on and off ramps on highways or merging streets where traffic is supposed to "zip" into itself works! i mean really works! people drive fast and accomodate incoming traffic so that there isnt any stopping when you're looking for somewhere to merge. i think people are actually aware of just how dangerous cars are, and so arent as blatantly stupid drivers. i'd almost argue that roadrage doesnt exist there, but i dont know that. horns are actually used for something, as opposed to the stupid use of them here. if you're going around a sharp turn that you cant see the other side of, honk to warn you're coming so that the bus that's careening down the hill on the other side of the turn knows to stop and let you finish the turn. also, honking at women. those are possibly the only two uses of car horns that i'm aware of.

vespas. no, it's not just cause they're italian. i like their look. maybe because my first exposure to scooters as an actual means of transportation was in italy, or maybe because of Empire Records (the movie, in which one of the characters has a vespa), or because Vespa means wasp and i think this is cool, i'm attached to the idea of owning a vespa, not just any scooter. i get attached to ideas, to certain views of how i envision things. and there is little explanation else of that. it's just how i picture something. and i picture a vespa when i picture a scooter. and it's usually in mint green, too, which is a little strange.

food. this is not a complete fabrication. food (and i mean this on very general terms) tastes better there. tomatos taste richer, mozzarella is an entire experience unto itself, gelato is not icecream, nor is it what they pass off as gelato here. maybe there are fewer preservatives and crap in their food, or maybe i avoid such foods while i'm there. maybe it's the volcanic soils of the bay of naples area that makes veggies taste different. i dont know. a good portion of the south of italy is constituted by farms and orchards that are tucked between residential areas and cities and at the base of volcanoes. a lot of good food can be bought for very little. and a lot of what would be considered luxury foods here (prosciutto, mozzarella,olives... luxury of the mediterranean diet variety) are vastly cheaper. mostly because of import prices here, i realize, and it probably works the other way as well. american-specific things being more expensive there, but either i dont notice, or dont eat american based foods there. not to say that i havent had jaw-droppingly good food here. but the simple foods on a more regular basis are better or more flavorful or something. the best orange juice i've ever had comes in an oversized juicebox for a euro and a half. bulk olives at the grocery store have not yet found a rival in any olives i try here. and i've been looking. fanta has 12% orange juice in it, whereas it's only 5% in the states. very good wine is possible for under 4 euro. and even the bad wine has a certain humor to it. or drinking it has a certain humor. the wine isnt all that funny. that's not true either. via crapolla wine and pinus wine are pretty funny. both really bad, but we drink it anyway. on the other hand, i've had a lot of bad food, mostly at the restaurant attached to the campsite. really bad food. but you never remember the bad parts as vividly as the good, and the good happens much more often.

and the experiences of things. castellamare is one of my favorites. it's a small port town between pompeii and sorrento named for a castle built on the mountain behind the town that looks out to the ocean. as is the way, we'd go to dinner around 8, come out of the train station and walk down the hill toward the ocean. at the base of the hill is a piazza, lined with tall trees and iron lampposts, a huge gazeebo in the center with stainglass dome. sort of what i picture paris to be like. little old women in groups of three are walking around, slowly, enjoying the evening. we walk along the edge of the city, where it meets the water, following old trolly tracks that havent been in use for some time. past huge warehouses right on the bay, parting for cars to pass through and noticing the sign that advertizes horse meat for sale. hmmm. come, after 10 or so minutes' walk, to the marina where private and some commercial boats are docked. there's a boardwalk that stretches from the street to the water. along the street side are some 25 booths that are each a seafood restaurant. spread out in front of each are some 20 tables. it's impossible to tell which tables belong to which booth other than the change in tablecloths. we walk to somewhere in the middle where antoinetta 10 is, our 'usual' booth. i dont know if there is an antoinetta 1 through 9 somewhere else. we sit (i've never been to castellamare with a group smaller than 12) at one long table. the same woman that has probably been working there her whole life, certainly for the last four years that i've been there, comes over and hands out a couple of menus. we say something about "menus? there didnt used to be menus." she confirms, says order whatever, you dont have to stick to the menu. we ask what's good today. she lists some things. we say, ok, that sounds good. we get clams and mussels and octapus and squid and mixed seafood platters and spaghetti with shrimp. we order a couple of plates of olives and lupini for the table. lupini are some sort of nut that have a waxy coating on them. if you squeeze them correctly, the meat shoots out of the coat and can be aimed at people. the lupini wars begin. we order wine, five or six bottles, which are slightly fizzy and not good wine. we get some water which comes in big plastic pitchers and is from the naturally frizzante spring nearby. a little cloudy but tastes wonderful. the food starts to come out. more and more of it. seafood that rivals most i've had. maine might be only place with better. we eat. we eat ourselves silly as the sun sets over vesuvius, visible on the other side of the bay, over the boats docked in the harbor. as we eat the pirate guy, a man of about 60 with a gravelly baritone voice who speaks some unintelligible version of neapolitan italian, comes by, pushing his cart full of toys, announcing what he has through a battery powered, multicolored bullhorn. he's blowing bubbles with his other hand with an automatic bubbleblowing toy. opera guy, a severely misshapen man with no neck and a hump, comes by, wearing his straw hat, slapping a beat on his chest and singing in a striking tenor. there's also a midget on stilts walking around, wearing a green sequened vest and bowtie. on stilts, he's pretty much normal height. they're all regulars there, are there every time i'm there. we finish eating, more food than we thought possible, and sit around laughing for a bit, everyone solidly tipsy, if not drunk. eventually we ask for the bill. somehow, even though we've each had a plate or two of seafood, a plate of olives, nearly a bottle of wine each, the bill still only comes to about 8 euro each. we pay, thank the women, walk by o per e' o muss (a vendor that sells whole cow snouts and pig noses), perhaps buy a toy from the pirate guy, walk slowly back to the trainstation, stopping to swingdance in the street, but finding that we're too drunk to either lead or follow, and get to the train (the last of which, in true castellamare fasion, has already left, abandoning the group to find either the bus which runs later than the train, or to wait for a miracle in the form of someone we know from spartacus offering to drive us all back to camp in shifts). every time is roughly the same. every time is just as fun.

speed. the US, for pretty good reasons, is on fast forward all the time. people are in a hurry to get there, get done, get famous, get rich, get out before anyone catches on, get GOING! other than their driving habits, italians hang out at a slower pace. dinners are hours long (hmmm, as evidenced by nori and my dinner/brunch tendencies?), punctuated by bottles of wine and conversation. cafes, while designed for a quick espresso shot so that you can run off again, lend themselves well to hanging out with your coffee and talking to the bar people. projects and work and related things take more time, but are usually done with careful attention and done correctly. people take pride in their work that i think is absent in the general population of america. probably because more businesses are family owned and operated and have a small, specific, loyal clientelle, the people that own the places are much more attunded to what they put forward as theirs. in cosenza, we stopped at a little corner market for lunch, went back to the meat counter and asked for sandwiches. not only were the sandwiches huge, heaped with prosciutto and mozzarella, the women brought out fresh basil and oregano unprompted and spread both on them, sprinkled a little sea salt, wrapped them carefully in wax paper, and sent us on our ways. the sandwiches cost under a dollar each.

i think the biggest connection that i have with italy is its connection to its past, a sort of refusal to remove the collective memory of objects and moments starting from time immemorial. ruins are everywhere. monuments are still monumental and still bear the names of the people for whom they were built. america, both for lack of a very long history and proclivity toward buldozing everything at regular intervals, has none of this. certain places do on a very minor scale, the east coast as a general whole being sort of one of them, san antonio and it's missions another, arizona and the four corners region a very large and very enticing third. but not in the same fluid way that italy has a continual layering of history that blends now and then into one. i think this has most to do with my one recognized fear of forgetting and being forgotten. i mean on the grand scale. my vision of true success is immortality, in the tradition of the classical authors and statesmen, or, perhaps shakespeare. a lofty goal, i realize, but there none the less. i set that as my general life goal (and is probably why i archive my life as closely as i do, incase anyone ever wanted to dedicate a museum to me, it would all be there with relevance of said object tagged to it with a date). italy is a country of packratism.
- posted by Claire @ 12:46 PM 1 comments

 
Not much time left
Only 7 days left of digging.  My room is going well, dirt is starting to really move (at least a bit faster than before) and I'm confident in my students. 

This summer has gone faster than most.  Unclear why and I want it to last a lot longer than it has.   No asbestos in my trench this year, no bomb damage, making it impossible to tell what went on in one of my rooms, an amazing lack of lapilli.  Just dirt and surfaces and a soakaway.  I'll get into more of this later, but I need to go catch up the archive and make sure my site notebook is in order.  And go through all the drawings and correct things that werent quite right in the beginning.  Hopefully more this weekend.

- posted by Claire @ 11:51 AM 0 comments

 
a long hiatus
ok, so admittedly i havent written anything since leaving for italy.  i know, i know, unforgivable.  and this has happened for a number of reasons. 

season is turning into a good one, albeit really weird.  the first week and a half of digging felt off kilter and frenetic, half because of an entire week of custodi assamblea (meetings, but effective at strikes and keeps us off site until 10:30), not sure of what the dirt was doing and where i would put all my students.  this year, in an attempt to offset the shoddy weight of the dollar against the euro and pound, the project cut its stafflist down by quite a few and took way too many students.  78 students.  lots of students.  each trench was alotted 13.  my trench is two rooms, about 9 meters by 6 meters total.  not much square footage per person, including myself, my assistant supervisor, and advanced student.  so most time was spent worrying about where i was going to put people to keep them busy and learning than really having time to get my mind around the archaeology and keep up with the archive.  but then through unfortunate circumstances of illness, i lost two students in the first week and a half, both of whom went home (hi lindsay,  chef).  additionally, a new trench was opened in the south of our block of study,  headed up by the early promotion of Jen and Tim, my two advanced students from last year (another unintentional compliment to me).  so another two students from my trench went down there to join the ad hoc culling of the southern trenches.  THEN, pavel, one of the supervisors, unexpectedly had to go home very quickly and Jen took over his trench, leaving Tim with both of the new trenches down south.  and my advanced student from this year moved down to help support tim.  much shuffling of people is the baseline of all of this.  and the end result is that i have about the right number of people in my trench now.  and have a good handle on the archaeology finally.  and all is right with the world again.  (whew!)

so the dirt.  i have a space that opens on to the via consolare.  at one time, it was part of the house of the surgeon (as told by a blocked doorway and blocked window), but in its final phase is self contained and some sort of commercial space.  past that, we only really know that there was definitely a use of water in the space as evidenced by a cistern head in the front room and this weird three-part water feature in the back room.  the interesting thing about my space is that we lose all the archaeology of the middle phases because they cut down the level of the room at some late stage to allow it to front onto consolare.  how's that, you ask?  hmmm, i need pictures to explain this, and i havent found a computer with a usb link up in this country yet.  more explanation about my archaeology later.  either way, the dirt is going well and i dont feel nearly as stressed as i did two weeks ago (thus goading me into feeling like i shouldnt spend time typing about archaeology that i didnt yet understand instead of writing about it in my site notebook and figuring it out, or atleast recording it). 

camp life is good too.  the first week was actually cold (very very strange in a land of overly hot days and sweating from pores you didnt know existed).  rained a couple of times,  but gently and for short increments of time.  it's finally gotten to the too-hot-to-sit-in-the-shade-comfortably type of heat which i'm more used to here.  doesnt seem like pompeii unless you're driven from your tent at 8am because it's too hot to breath.  right now, we're on our long weekend which translates to a normal weekend off.  usually we work 6 days a week and get saturday off, but have to grade and catch up on the archive, make sure all the records are in order and readable.  on the long weekend we get both saturday and sunday free, and half of friday.  i sort of slept through the afternoon yesterday.  hammocks are a wonderful thing.  so are four hour naps. 

ok, i'm stopping there, i may well write more tomorrow, or even later today, but i'm about to run out of computer time.  still need to find a computer with a usb port to upload pics.  see what i can do.  ciao!


- posted by Claire @ 10:20 AM 1 comments

 
So it begins...
I'm here and we start digging tomorrow.

No problems with the flight at all, though I didnt sleep as much as I would have liked on the long leg from Chicago to London. Worked out well enough. Met Shorty and Alvin (and probably a couple dozen AAPP first year students) in London and carried on to Naples. Got bags, got a cab, and were at Camping Spartacus within the half hour. Beautiful. I got the same tent space that I have had for the last two years, but then moved over a spot which had more shade. This seems to be the year of the big tent. So many of the first years brought four person tents. They're HUGE and take up much to much ground space. They're squished in in the middle of the little tent insulae in not so comfortable quarters. But it works well enough.

The drinking has also commenced already. Last night was quite a night, and wont be repeated until the weekend. Maybe Tuesday.

Anyway, I'm digging in a completely different area from the one I was in last year. I have a two-room space that joins the House of the Surgeon and the Shrine, a space that should have a lot of interesting material and will answer a lot of questions about how the House of the Surgeon and the Southern part of the block interact, along with the possibility of finding remains of a pre-Surgeon house.

Here's the breakdown. Past archaeologists and researchers have said that the House of the Surgeon is one of the oldest houses in Pompeii which has kept its general form through its entire life span. It has been dated to the 8th century based on its ashlar masonry (big square blocks placed one on top of another). Dating by construction type is not a reliable method in Pompeii as none of the building methods actually correspond to dates. In the last two years, the AAPP has refuted the 8th century date, putting the house in its final phase at 2nd century BC, a considerable chunk of time difference. However, based on things found last year, there may have been a previous house before the one that is standing now that doesnt follow any of the current spacial divisions. I might find corroboration for that in my trench. And I have to say that I'm rather flattered that I was given the space. It's a really important space for understanding the interaction of the two halves of the block. And there is going to be a lot going on in it.

Tomorrow morning I meet my students and we start excavating in ernest. Here's hoping there isn't any asbestos in my trench like there was last year.

Oh, right, and the House of the Surgeon is called such because when it was first cleared of volcanic debris, surgical tools were found in one of the rooms. However, they were gynecological tools and the standing theory is that the owner was an abortionist. But they dont tell the public that.
- posted by Claire @ 4:56 PM 2 comments

 
Pompeii FAQs
There are a number of questions that are always asked about Pompeii and being a part of a dig in Pompeii. They are:

1. Hasnt it all been excavated already?
2. Find anything good?
3. Find any dead bodies?
4. Do you really live in tents?
5. Are you afraid of the volcano?
6. Isn't digging really tedious?
7. There's a modern Pompei?
8. What's the deal with the spelling? Is it with one or two I's?
9. Why do you only dig during the summer?
(This is only a start, ask me more if you have other questions.)

And answers...

1. No, by no means. Pompeii was first discovered in the late 16th century and 'excavated' of the volcanic debris and ash in the mid 18th centrury. These digs only removed material down to the floor level of the city when the volcano buried it, the 79 AD level. My dig starts there, at that floor level, and goes down, excavating to find out how the block developed over time to end up as it was when the volcano buried it. Property lines changed, use of space changed, and there is evidence for all of that in the dirt. So while 2/3rds of the ancient city has been uncovered to the 79AD level, very very little of this area has undergone proper archaeological excavation below that level. The remaining third of the still-buried city will remain as such since the Soprintendenza of Pompeii passed a law forbidding further excavation of still-buried areas. A very good move from a conservation standpoint, and I'll go into that further later.

2. Yes. Dig most places in Italy and you cant help but find stuff. Pottery, glass, metal, bone (animal bone), brick and tile, mostly discarded and broken in ancient times, but LOTS of it. Probably a couple of tons of pottery each season.

3. No, no dead bodies. Our block is located just inside the Herculaneum gate. Firstly, this is the closest area of Pompeii to Vesuvius and the people that lived there were probably the first to run (complete speculation, but if you're a person living closest to a smoking volcano, you'd run too, wouldn't you). More importantly, when Pompeii was first excavated in the 1700s, this excavation began at the Herculaneum gate and moved south. Our block was the first to be uncovered. So any of the 79AD artifacts (including dead bodies) would have been removed then.

4. Yes, we really live in tents. I just got a new 5x7 foot tent. And yes, our campsite is called Camping Spartacus. More on campsite living when I get there and can post pictures.

5. I am not afraid of Vesuvius. Although it is still active. It erupted last sometime in the 40s, and is getting due for another one, I'm told, but I'm not worried at all. Mom might be a little worried, but she's more worried about my relative closer proximity to Iraq (this is a needless worry too, as far as I'm concerned, since I live in DC most of the year, which is certainly a better target than Pompeii).

6. Sometimes digging is tedious, but not as much as some people would expect. We get to use big tools sometimes (pickaxes and big shovels) and while care is necessary, we do not excavate with brushes. Brushes are overkill. We move a lot of dirt in the five weeks that we're there, so digging quickly but carefully is a must.

7. Yes, there is a modern Pompei. Ancient Pompeii is located in the middle of the Bay of Naples, a very populous area of Italy. The ruins are right in the middle of several towns, one of which is modern Pompei. It's a kinda grungy town that is better known in Italy for being home to the Cathedral of Pompei. Anyway, There's no getting away from tourists and roads and people and cities and civilization. I'm not out in the middle of nowhere. I live a quick walk away from a very large supermarket, down town modern Pompei, the south Italy highway, and all the other amenities of an Italian city (gelato!).

8. Ancient Pompeii has two I's as it is the Latin plural of Pompeius, the family the city was named after. Modern Pompei has one I cause it's Italian and the second I was dropped somewhere in the evolution of Latin to Italian.

9. We only dig in the summer for a couple of reasons. The dig is run by Professors and other academics, all of whom have to go home to their universities during the academic year to teach. Secondly, the vast majority of the fieldschool students (who do all the digging) are college kids and have the summer off. Thirdly, winters in Italy are rainy and mud is really hard to dig.

Ask me more questions if you have them!
- posted by Claire @ 6:49 PM 4 comments