Wanna Get Dirty This Summer?

Every­one should par­tic­i­pate in a dig once in their life– and it might as well be in Rome. In June 2010, we’ll be start­ing our fifth sea­son of exca­va­tion at the Villa delle Vignacce, one of the great­est exca­va­tion sites in and around Rome. We’re look­ing for peo­ple from all walks of life– struc­tural and com­puter engi­neers, archi­tects, artists, poets, stu­dents, accoun­tants and ten­nis play­ers– what­ever your back­ground and insights are, we want you– espe­cially if you are happy to spend 8 hours get­ting sweaty and dirty work­ing to save the cul­tural her­itage of Rome.

Here are some Q and A’s that I have come up with based on ques­tions we’ve been asked about our past sum­mer digs. I hope this helps any­one who is inter­ested in exca­vat­ing with us this sum­mer. And if there are other ques­tions, please send them to me.

What is the project? Why is it impor­tant?
The project is Villa delle Vignacce, fas­ci­nat­ing because we still are work­ing to grasp the pur­pose of the sprawl­ing site– is it a 2nd cen­tury villa or a pub­lic bath? Its impor­tance is that it is a multi-storied, undoc­u­mented, unspoiled site. The mate­ri­als are rich– mar­ble veneer, glass paste mosaics in the vaults, pre­cious stat­u­ary. The archi­tec­ture is extra­or­di­nar­ily well pre­served with a whole series of under­ground tunnels.

Where is the excavation?
We’re in Rome’s sub­ur­bium– an inte­gral part of the great URBS– con­nected today by a 20 minute metro ride from the cen­ter of Rome. Our pre­cise loca­tion is at Via Lemo­nia, in the Park of the Aque­ducts, where there are some of the most famous aque­duct arcades from Rome’s impe­r­ial past. They serve as a back­drop to the site, which also orig­i­nally tapped into the water sup­ply for foun­tains and bath complex.

What hap­pens on an exca­va­tion field school?
We spend week one in “full Rome immer­sion”, vis­it­ing the major sites, col­lec­tions, 7 hills of Rome, Rome’s port city Ostia Antica and lec­tur­ing on site on build­ing mate­ri­als, engi­neer­ing, etc. The remain­ing five weeks are spent at the site, from 7 am until 4 pm each day. We start early because it gets hot fast. We drink a lot of flu­ids and watch out for each other to pre­vent heat exhaus­tion. Hey, it’s stren­u­ous work! But we take lots of breaks and if you are over­tired or get­ting too much sun, you can always have a rest.

What do we do in Rome?
We live here because it is a dynamic city that has some­thing to explore every­day– whether its ancient, under­ground, museum or neigh­bor­hood. Per­son­ally, I like the great street­food in Trastevere.

Stu­dents come from all, rep­re­sent­ing schools like Har­vard, Yale, Brown, UCLA, USC, Clem­son, Bran­deis, Holy Cross, Carthage and David­son– and inter­na­tional locales– Aus­tralia, Eng­land, Swe­den, Ire­land. We’ve also had par­tic­i­pants where were mort­gage bro­kers, phys­i­cal ther­a­pists, archi­tects and invest­ment bankers.

Do I have to be a Clas­sics major?
Def­i­nitely not. We love our Clas­sics and Archae­ol­ogy majors but we also encour­age peo­ple from all areas and back­grounds to participate.

The Marsyas statue, by far. There are 60 known vari­ants of Marsyas skinned alive (pun­ished for chal­leng­ing and los­ing to Apollo in a music con­test), but the Vignacce Marsyas was found in con­text (unlike most of the oth­ers). And con­text is key to under­stand­ing its pur­pose in an exact loca­tion, ver­sus just a thing of aes­thetic beauty.

How much Ital­ian do I have to know?
None, but you’ll cer­tainly learn some. Many of the staff are Italian.

Is there an age limit?
No, we’ve have stu­dents fin­ish­ing high school to retired peo­ple in their late 60s. Just ask to find out more.

Def­i­nitely not. Please inquire: studyabroad[at]romanculture.org

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