The site and Etruscan religion

The excavation is on a hill in Chianti that overlooks the surrounding patchwork of vineyards, olive groves, and forest.  The hill can be divided into three terraces, and we are digging on the upper two.  The middle terrace contained a crevice that leads into a limestone cavern below, which is now covered with earth.  The upper terrace contains a well that has been filled in, and although past excavations have dug within the well, they have only reached the strata from the medieval period.  Given the Etruscans penchant to throw things into wells, there is much left to be discovered there, but there is not enough funding for the machinery and experts to dig below the water table.

The site was established in the Paleolithic period, as evidenced by the tools found there.  The Etruscans turned the site into an artisan's workshop and sanctuary, likely because of the crevice on the middle terrace that leads into the caves below.  The Etruscans were pantheists and believed that the gods informed and charged each object and event.  Their religion was much more mystical than the Greeks and Romans, and their priests read the future and the will of the gods through lightning, portents, and the entrails of sacrifices made to the gods of the sky, earth, and underworld.

Sites where crevices or caves gave access to spaces below the earth were conducive for sacrifices to the underworld gods, who were often variations of sky and earth gods.  Additionally, the mystical foundations of Etruscan religion made these sites important.  Roman writers record that the Etruscans learned their religion from a child named Tages who resembled a withered old man.  The child came from and returned to the space below the earth.  Since Tages's revelations laid the foundation of much of Etruscan religion (much of it also stemming from Greek mythology), Etruscans priest tried since then to further uncover the spiritual underpinnings of the physical world through divination and other practices of revelation.  In Tarquinia, past excavations have found a child burial beside a crevice in the earth that became an important sanctuary for the founding of the city at Tarquinia.  As forensic evidence has shown, the child was an epileptic and likely suffered hallucinations; we can likely assume that he was considered prophetic and revelatory like Tages.  Whether the Etruscans were returning the child to the crevice in the manner of Tages after its untimely death, or whether they sacrificed the child is unknown, but the practice of human sacrifice seems to have been a part, though rare, of Etruscan religion and culture.

At Cetamura, the site where we are digging, Etruscan artisans created votive pottery and figure that pilgrims or passthroughs bought and dedicated to the gods of the sanctuary at the crevice.  There was a small habitation site around the sanctuary, which does not seem to be urban or aristocratic.  A few years ago, the dig team found pottery with inscriptions that revealed the names of the gods to which the sanctuary was devoted.  These gods are rare and obscure, and the only other evidence that we have of them are a few bronze mirrors identify them with inscriptions.  The gods are represented as wild and prophetic, often with bare chests, long hair, and their heads thrown back, howling at the sky.  In one mirror, one the gods is show examining a severed human leg in the process of divination, a curious scene.

Last year, during the excavations of the what was thought to be trash pits between the middle and upper terraces, the dig team found a slew of bones.  Some were common: cow, sheep, pig, but other bones, such as those from dogs, puppies, and suckling pigs, serve as evidence that animal sacrifices were made at the site and that the supposed trash pits were actually the depositories of the sacrificed animals.  The lab results also revealed that one of the bones was a human tibia.  Given that this leg was found with the other remains of sacrifices, it support the conclusion that Etruscan priests who were dedicated to the site's gods may have used human sacrifices and body parts for divination, just as the bronze mirror shows.  This year's team is itching to get more out the depositories and are currently removing the wall of an ancient Roman bath complex that stands above them to find what lies below.

Primo giorno

The dig began last Saturday in the rain.  I met Dr. Ewell and Dr. Taylor that morning at the rental agency, where I received the keys to a massive black van, stick-shift, that I will be driving for the season.  I drove the van from Florence to lunch at Dr. Hatfield's in the piedmont northwest of the city.  I had to pick up the archaeology students at the Siena train station at five, but lunch started late and I lost track of time.  Leaving late, I wheeled down to Florence, hit the Viale, and made my way to the Super Strada.  Unfortunately, I took the old road to Siena winds through the hill country in Chianti.  I realized my mistake and tried to make up for lost time, riding the clutch down the hills, bursting out of a switch-back or hairpin turns, and zooming past small towns like Greve and Castellina.  It was raining and the foliage that hadn't yet matured into the deep green of summer was wet and verdant, nearly neon against the grey sky.  The van lurched and bobbed through its tortuous path, the engine roaring, catching, accelerating.  I arrived at the station a only little late and full of adrenaline.  I then responsibly shuttled the students to Radda.

We are staying in villa built in the 1960's that is located a kilometer down the hill from Radda.  The villa overlooks the vineyards that produce Chianti Classico; it is cavernous and decorated as it was half a century ago.  It has been cold and at night, we light fires to keep the house warm.  We take our meals together there, leaving for the excavation site at eight and returning at five.  I have plenty more to write about all of this later.  Ciao.

Finito

A few more paleography and archival research classes aside, the semester is finished at last.  I have learned that just as discretion is the better part of valor, avoidance is the better part of scholarship.

The dig begins Saturday, and I need to finish the game-plan for the Symposium and a few books on the Etruscan site at Cetamura.  I have a few dinners this week, including a goodbye dinner for a friend and MAN FEAST(!) on Thursday night.  MAN FEAST(!) will be held at an undisclosed location; early reports indicate that there will be a lack of glasses, muliebrity, utensils, vegetables, time, and possessions.

It's been raining and cold since early last week, and this weather is supposed to continue until the end of this week.  When the sun emerges briefly, I have been escaping to the Boboli Gardens to read there.

St. Mark's Apartments

I've launched the website: http://florenceholidayapartments.org/

Please take a look and feel free to contact me about it.

La notte bianca e il capanno di birra

Last night was La notte bianca, The White Night, when most of the shops and museums in Florence stay open until dawn.  I made dinner with Caitlin and Nicola: pasta with a sauce made with curry, fresh zucchini, and shrimp.  After drinking copious amounts of Chianti, we met more friends and hit the streets.  The centro storico was packed.  It was midnight, and the city felt like a carnival.  We pushed through the crowds to various piazze to see the concerts and events happening there.  It wasn't long before playing rugby with half of Tuscany became annoying, so we headed to the Palazzo Vecchio and spent a few hours there exploring.  Many of the rooms that are not regularly open, like the Terazza di Saturno, were open last night, and wandering through the darkened palazzo, with its grotesques, mythological scenes, and complex architecture, was dreamlike.

Today, we walked to San Minato al Monte.  The organist was practicing Bach inside the church, and we sat outside the facade, listening to the music while we soaked in the sun and looked out over Florence.  We meandered to Vivoli for gelato and wandered through the market in Santa Croce.  I am headed now to the Oblate to finish a paper for restoration.  I'd rather be taken out back and beaten.  I have finished two of my three major papers for the semester, and this is the last one.  It's due on Monday, and Tuesday night, I am planning to go at last to Beatles night at Bee Bop.

Otherwise, Rosa's hut has reopened last week.  Rosa is a Dominican woman who sells apertivi from an octagonal metal structure in the northwest corner of Piazza Savonarola.  When I was studying abroad as in Florence an undergraduate, my friends and I often bought beer from Rosa after classes.  Sipping Heineken tall-boys, we would sit in the piazza and watch families and children from the neighborhood talk and play.  Last Thursday, after two major deadlines, Maggie, Gigi, Caitlin, and I decided to get a few drinks at the hut.  I went to buy the first round, and when I saw Rosa, I reintroduced myself and told her how sweet she was to me and my friends five years ago when I was an undergraduate.  She looked at me sideways, but suddenly a flash of recognition spread across her face.  She laughed, told me that she remembered us well, and we chatted briefly.  She popped the tops off of three beers and pushed them across the bar.  When I reaching for my wallet, she stopped me and said that this round was for old times' sake.  I thanked her, and walked back to my friends sitting under the statue of Savonarola.  Like old times, we sat, sipped our Heinekens, and watched the families and their children in the piazza.

Plans

Since I haven't written lately, I have to gloss most of what has been happening.  I am currently finishing two research papers, and I have one more left.  These are due next week, so I have spent most of the past two weeks working.  We finalized the plans for the church apartments today, and I am now managing them.  I will post a link to their website soon once I fix a few things on the site.  Activity for the Bronzino Conference should pick up as grants come due this summer, and the archaeological dig in Gaiole begins on May 15th.  After the dig, friends are coming to visit in early July.  Then it's Paris before house-sitting in Chiati during the ferragosto, when I plan to write my Master's thesis.  September brings more visiting friends and thesis work.  I head back to South Carolina for a week or so in late October to celebrate a friend's wedding.

Classes are nearly finished, though documents extends well into May, and I am glad about both.  Florence is beautiful, and when I am not writing away, I spend most of my time strolling and people-watching with friends or reading in the Boboli Gardens.  The girls have rediscovered their spring wardrobe, and life is good.  I have been studying at the Biblioteca Oblate, which has a open loggia on its roof that overlooks the cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore and gets lots of sun.  It's warm enough to start eating gelato, and I have grown to like particularly the amareno and ricotta and fig flavors.  I am growing my beard and gave myself a haircut today.  I was relatively successful.

Nukes

Regarding the nuclear disarmament talks in Russia, nuclear weapons should be better recognized for their contribution to world peace.  The Cold War would have been much hotter if the looming threat of nuclear war didn't exist.  It's that threat that prevents world powers from amassing troops for invasion, unless, of course, the country to be invaded does not have nukes of their own.  Regardless, conflict isn't going anywhere; it only must be more precise or covert.