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