Saturday, 26 October 2013

5 Fun Facts about Hampshire

Time for more 5 fun facts! This time I'll be focusing on the history and archaeology of Hampshire as a county in general:

1. The origins of the county are linked to the Anglo-Saxons and the formation of Wessex, as well as the centre of what became England; the first mention of Hampshire (although disputed) appears to be in 755, as "Hamtunscir"; apparently however, this is not to be confused with the "Hamtunscir" of Northamptonshire that appeared in 1011! (Grant 1989; p.67,p.103). The county takes it's name from the Saxon settlement of Hamwic, now the modern day Southampton (see my previous blog here). In addition to this, it is also known that there was Roman and prehistoric presence  in the Southampton area too!
Image 1: John Speed's map of Hampshire (Mappa Mundi)


2. The New Forest is famous for being a Medieval royal forest, but it was also the centre of Roman pottery production and the beginning of the Saxon invasion of England! The heathland that you see today is partly the result of Iron Age woodland clearances (New Forest National Park 2013). More recently, excavations are showing the impact World War 2 had on the area as well (see here, Wessex Archaeology 2012).

3.Below is a map of all the known shipwrecks in the East Hampshire coastline! There are far too many to    go over individually; but this website that allows you to look through wrecks in the area and beyond, including the aptly named HMS Hampshire, which sank in the North Sea (http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?10355).
.Image 2: Shipwrecks in the east Solent( channel. Note how they are facing mostly to the west 

4. A Victorian who lived in Southampton, William Cantelo, invented a rapid-firing machine gun, but also learned to dissappear and make a name for himself under a new pseudonym of Hiram Maxim, who suspiciously also developed a  rapid-firing machine gun! However, it wasn't the first machine gun- that honour goes to Gatling of the USA (Daily Echo 2012).

5. The modern Hampshire County Council was established in 1889, but only obtained it's "modern" coat of arms in 1992 from the College of Arms to celebrate it's centenary! The lion represents Winchester's former status as England's capital during the Middle Ages, while the Stag represents the New Forest, and the castle represents Hampshire's importance in the "defence of the realm" (possibly an inspiration for the World War One Act (D.O.R.A.)?). The rose is the county badge, like many other counties in England. However, this is not the actualy logo of the Council, but just to to maintain the tradition of having a coat of arms for any self-respecting individual or concern, since the council is strictly speaking in service to the royal family (because the government has every law approved by the queen, which is a formality these days)! (Hampshire County Council 2012)
Image 3: The Hampshire County Council coat of arms(Hampshire County Council 2012) 

So there we are! Next time, I may delve more into Hampshire, this is a fairly broad section 

References:

Daily Echo, last asccessed 26/10/2013, Mystery of the Disappearing Machine-gun inventor, http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/heritage/hampshireheritage/9883412.Mystery_of_the_disappearing_machine_gun_inventor/, last updated 20/08/2012

Grant, R., 1989, The Real Counties of Britain, Macdonald & Co, london, pp.67, 103.

Hampshire County Council, last accessed 26/10/2013, The Hampshire County Council Coat of Arms: History, http://www3.hants.gov.uk/hampshirenow/earlierissues/hnow-autumn2012/coat-of-arms.htm last updated 24/08/2013

New Forest National Park, last accessed 26/10/2013, Archaeological Heritage: Human Impact Through the Ages, http://www.newforestnpa.gov.uk/info/20089/rich_cultural_heritage/137/archaeological_heritage, last updated 2013

Wessex Archaeology, September 2012, Buckler's Hard, Beaulieu, New Forest, Hampshire: Archaeological Evaluation Report, New Forest National Park Authority and Wessex Archaeology, Salisbury.

Appendix:

Image 1:Mappa Mundi, John Speed Hampshire Map, last accessed 26/10/2013, http://www.mappamundi.co.uk/product/john-speed-hampshire-map/, last updated 2013.
Image 2: http://www.romseysac.com/diving/wreckdatabase/hampshire.htm, last updated unknown.
Image 3: http://www3.hants.gov.uk/hampshirenow/earlierissues/hnow-autumn2012/coat-of-arms.htm, last updated 24/09/2013
Links:

Link 1: http://www.newforestnpa.gov.uk/downloads/file/241/festival_of_british_archaeology_2012_excavation_report_for_buckler_s_hard
Link 2:https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6544794733641830361#editor/target=post;postID=4146439591114553757;onPublishedMenu=posts;onClosedMenu=posts;postNum=1;src=postname

Sunday, 13 October 2013

5 Fun Facts about Southampton

It has happened. I've moved to Southampton! From one end of the country (Durham, see here for my 5 fun facts on Durham) to the other, I will be spending the next 12 months in this major port city completing my Master's degree. So time for another edition of 5 Fun Facts:

1. Southampton began life as a small, but significant, Saxon town called Hamwic around AD700 between the rivers Test and the Itchen. Back then, it was considered a major town, which shows evidence of early Saxon town planning (see map 1). Hamwic enjoyed "complementary" trading relations with Winchester, the nearby royal town (Hamerow 2002), which basically meant that the two towns were essentially best mates, and while Winchester was older and more established, Hamwic was the more dynamic of the two and was able to exploit trading links with the continent, being sited next to the sea in a relatively safe natural harbour. Thus Southampton has always been assocaited with the sea.

Map 1: Image of Hamwic, facing north, with the river Itchen to the right; the Test is about 1/2 mile to the west. Note the ordered formation of the roads (Archaeology in Europe).

However, Hamwic collapsed during the 9th century, for reasons that are not fully understood today; reasons range from Viking invasion (or indirect Viking influence affecting English Channel trade), to political instability in England at the time.

Hamwic has been excavated multiple times, but the most important excavations were at Six Dials in Northam (a district of Southampton), which produced streets filled with animal bones (direct evidence of butchers?), and over 60 buildings (Hamerow 2002)!

2. The logo of the city is "the gateway to the world", which comes from Southampton's roots as a port city, but not just to it's colonal importance (when Victorians would emigrate out of Britain through Southampton, Liverpool and other major port cities to new parts of the world;  the phrase "gateway to the British Empire" was inventedfor this reason!). The modern docks have been in their present location since 1843 (portcities). "The gateway to the World" logo also reflects Southampton's status as one of the busiest ports in the world; in 2011, it was second only to London (felixstowe port) in terms of container traffic in the UK, and, although it may sound unimpressive, this made Southampton no. 86 in the world for container traffic! See here for more info.


3. Ordance Survey, who produce maps for the UK, were originally based in London, at the Tower of London. But after a fire in said tower in 1841  highlighted the need for more (and more fire-proof!) office space, they relocated to Southampton. (Ordance Survey 2013, Historic Royal Palaces 2013).With the advent of the train and faster ships, this meant that it is wasn't necessary to be located so close to your owners (i.e. the government), and Ordance Survey to this day is still based on the outskirts of Southampton, producing maps for the world.

4. Southampton, along with Portsmouth and other small towns nearby, make up around 850,000 people, with Southampton contributing aout 230,000 people to this total, making it one of the UK's larger cities, but again, a rather unimpresive21st. But it's not the size that counts: famous residents in the past have included Jane Austen (briefly), Craig David, and Coldplay drummer Will Champion!

5. Large areas of Southampton have now been recognised as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), and also in marine cases, European Special Protection Areas (SPA) and Special Areas of Conservation (SAC). See here for more information on marine coastal protection. Southampton Common, which is open to the public, is a large example of an urban SSSI.

Next time, I will delve further into Hampshire; with the New Forest, South Downs and Goodwood set to feature, it should be more exciting facts that you may not have known about the local area!

Comments always appreciated!

References:

Hamerow, H, 2002, Great Sites: Hamwic, in British Archaeology, issue 66, http://www.archaeologyuk.org/ba/ba66/feat3.shtml

Historic Royal Palaces, last updated unknown, The Ordance Survey, last accessed 13/10/2013, http://www.hrp.org.uk/TowerOfLondon/stories/buildinghistory/ordnance-survey

Ordnance Survey, last updated unknown, Our History, last accessed 13/10/2013, http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/about/overview/history.html

Portcities, last updated unknown, PortCities: Southampton, last accessed 13/10/2013, http://www.plimsoll.org/Southampton/default.asp

Appendix:

Map 1: Archaeology in Europe, last updated unknown, Early Medieval Emporia: Hamwic, or Saxon Southampton, http://www.archeurope.com/index.php?page=hamwic-or-saxon-southampton, last accessed 13/10/2013
Link in e.g. 2: American Association of Port Authorities, World Port Rankings 2011, 2012, http://aapa.files.cms-plus.com/PDFs/WORLD%20PORT%20RANKINGS%202011.pdf
Link in e.g. 5:The Yatchman's Guide to Southampton Water and It's Approaches, Associated British Ports, date published unknown, http://www.southamptonvts.co.uk/admin/content/files/PDF_Downloads/yachtsman%20guide.pdf

P.S

Check out this blog! http://geologistinthedoctorwhoscarf.blogspot.co.uk

Saturday, 5 October 2013

Digging an Etruscan House, Part Three: How Does it Affect You and Me?

So, the Casa Del Anfore has been excavated. The finds are many and varied; they have been cleaned, analysed and the best are in a museum in Scansano, Tuscany. The rest are in a converted school, lying in a darkened room. People have written up the site report for others to enjoy. But if you're reading this and you're not an archaeologist or someone who has little interest in the subject, the chances are the last three sentences are not going to convince you any more that you should paying more attention to the archaeology in your neighbourhood.

Herein lies my dilemma; the public must be told of these finds that archaeologists find (in some cases, by law), but is that audience going to listen, when other major things are happening that are considered more important or interesting, like the recent government shutdown in the USA? Here goes...

The exciting world of the Etruscans! 

Italy, c.2,500 years ago: imagine you are a high class Tuscan citizen. you own a house overlooking the sea, and your family has been in the area for many years (family was important to the Etruscans: tombs in Tarquinia attest to family lineage stretching over hundreds of years). They can probably trace their roots to Turkey (new genetic research shows that this is likely for many Etruscans, who are genetically distinct from modern Italians!), and your deceased are interred into grand underground tombs nearby (Tuscany is littered with Etruscan tombs; check out Vetulonia, Tarquinia, Marsiliana to name but a few places). Food was important to you: the countryside gives you food aplenty! You own Greek, Egyptian and Phoenician pottery, clothing, food and other products (all of these things have been found on Etruscan sites). You were highly likely to be literate (the Etruscans had their own language, that is distinct from Latin), regardless if you were a man or a woman, and likely to be practising a religion. You would have dined in grand style (there is so much literature on this!) Your lifestyle may have varied from being a merchant dealing in everything frmo slaves to wild animals, a farmer, a metal-smith, a tax-collector, a pottery-maker, a chariot-owner, a marble sculptor, an engineer, a soldier and so on (all of these job titles can be guessed at using the archaeology and written history of the Etruscans). Oh yes, and you would have had slaves to do your chores. A more Italian desription of the Etruscans can be found here (in English), but also here is a more comprehensive, but short academic approach to the Etruscans.
  
The sort of views you could have enjoyed as an Etruscan! (author's own)

So how does that relate to the Casa Del Anfore (see other blog posts below)? Well, what I've just described above could largely be applied to the Casa, and a lot of what we have found fits this description. Aside from the well, which is rare but not unheard of in Etruscan society, this Casa fits the description of your average high class family in Etruscan times. Ok, so it's biased towards the high-class society, but very little of the lower class society exists compared to the high-class.

Uncanny Similarities

What strikes you most about the Etruscans? A similarity between our lifestyle and theirs, perhaps? My point is that since the dawn of time, where there have been civilisations, there have been later civilisations trying to emulate them. The Romans loved the Etruscans; so much so that Emperors proceeded to take the Etruscan's statues to Rome! By trying to emulate them, and copying aspects of their culture, the Etruscans were nearly lost to history. This is something that the British empire had been doing for some time to a number of modern and ancient civilisations and cultures, nearly to the same extent as the Romans did! Arguably we did it on a grander scale, but at least we were more tolerant of the people whose lands we took.

A late Etruscan tomb (c.4th century BC i.e. after the abandonment of the Cassa Del Anfore), with the statue on top reclining, depicting the man who was buried in the tomb. It was deliberately designed to emphasise the character the person had; for example, if s/he was a political figure of good intentions, or if s/he was overweight! (author's own)

But what about the here and now? What about the government shutdown, for example? Did the Etruscans have a similar situation that we can learn from? Well, their form of government involved a series of city states, not unlike the Greek form of government. While modern democracy is much fairer than the Etruscan system, it too owes it's roots to these civilisations. Now this is speculating, but Etruscan city states would probably have run out of money too, and they would have needed to pay soldiers, administrators, maybe even engineers etc. with debts! There are very records that exist of Etruscans having to deal with political matters, but it seems probable that the situations that people find themselves in today had parallels in older civilisations too!

Conclusions

So the Etruscans affect you and me in one way because we have been doing like the Romans and acquiring (sometimes stealing) bits of culture from other civilisations. But also, because you can argue that we can trace our culture back to the Romans, and the Romans themselves can trace some of their culture to the Etruscans (see here as to the relationship between the Etruscans and the Romans), that means that culturally, we are descended from the Etruscans. you might even be related to the people who lived there! Of course, we are descended from other cultures, like the Mesopotamians, using the same logic, but here it is poignant, becasue the Etruscans were innovative, and were the first to use curved arches in Italy, for example (although this idea was taken from thre Greeks!).



References:

Lockar, C.A., 2011 (2nd edition), Societies, Networks, and Transistions, Vol.1: A Global History to 1500, Wadsworth, Boston.
 

First link: Sorre, L., last updated unknown, Castello Banfi, Montalcino, A Salute to the Etruscan Origins of Tuscan Cuisine, last accessed 05/10/2013


Second and third link: anon, 2007, last updated 2007, University of Notre Dame, Etruscans and Greeks in Pre-Roman Italy,8th-5th centuries BCE, http://ocw.nd.edu/classics/history-of-ancient-rome/lectures-1/etruscans-and-greeks-in-pre-roman-italy-8th-5th, last accessed 05/10/2013

Tuesday, 1 October 2013

Digging an Etruscan house, part two: photos!

Here are some photos of the excavations, taken from my digital camera, the Vivitar F128 (f=8.15mm):

The site near completion: this is the courtyard full of stones, facing roughly North East.

On the first day of the Macchiabuia dig, this is the exposed remains of one of the previously excavated tombs (excavated in the early 20th century).

The same tomb taken from a different angle, to give an idea of scale. Note the tripod in the background.

A harmless green whipsnake. However, scorpions and vipers were on site, as well as some other wierd and somewhat dangerous creatures!

My favourite find on site: an Etruscan door-hinge. It was found in the doorway of one of the rooms in the casa del anfore!

This Bronze arrow-shaped object was found next to the door-hinge, in the same context. Was the bronze aobject crushed by the collapsing door?

Recording a context- using the string to delimit the 2-dimensional area of the context, an accurate drawing is taken, and a vertical photograph for reference.

Some of the excavators taking new orders in the courtyard-remove the stones!

The pit I was stuck digging in for 3 weeks!

Some rather linear features inside the circular pit- why are they in here? Turns out that it was part of a deep well!


The last picture I took on the camera of the site :(. That tree created a lot of shade, but as you can probably see from the other photos, tree roots were a major problem throughout the Casa!

Digging an Etruscan house, part one!

Hi! It's been  a while, but I have arrived back in the UK from Italy, having spent the last 5 weeks in Tuscany on what can only be described as the best site I have ever worked on. I would like to firstly thank everyone who made this possible; Mark and Joanne at GRAMPUS heritage for advertising and paying for the opportunity (http://www.grampusheritage.co.uk/), Elena, Silvia, Duccio, Lorala and Alessandro from the Etruria Nova Onlus project (http://etrurianova.altervista.org/joomla/en/), the Corsini family for allowing the dig to happen on their land (they are one of the most powerful royal families in Italy!), La Speranza Agriturismo for letting us use their accomodation (www.agriturismolasperanza.it) and the other volunteers who were there on either the Casa del Anfore site or the Macchabuia site  (Jeremy, Flora, Shauni, Ele, Grace, Francesco, Karen, Sofina, Sujata, Liah, Lisa, Graeme and Skander) Also, thanks to Grace for providing some useful comments on site aobut some of the features the team found (you might recognise them here!). Read on...

Outline:

The Etruscans are well known in Italy for 3 things- importing Greek/Phoenician/Egyptian influence to Italy, a language that is not Indo-European (i.e. not related to any other language in Europe today) and tomb building on an unprecedented scale, in terms of quality and quantity. We're talking completely painted buildings built underground for one or two people, or for multiple occupants placed there (or interred) over a long period of time; essentially "houses of the dead". We know that the Etruscan families paid close attention to their family linages; later on in the 4th and 3rd centuries there are well documented accounts of high status Etruscan families marking on their stone coffins that they were descended from kings or other prominent members of society. Although these tombs are too early to be related to high-status families in this way, we may be seeing the emergence of this practice (albeit without any writing on any coffins).  Furthermore, unlike today where a huge forest has overgrown around the hillside of Marsiliana, the hills would have had virtually no tree cover at all, which may have been important for assessing the landscape in ancient times.

The casa site, which is near the top of one of the hills to the south of Marsiliana,  is believed to be an Etruscan site of the 6-5th century BC (like a Roman villa but smaller) (Humphrey, Kacorzyk, Pallechi and Santoro 2011), which, upon discovery a few years ago, contained an entire layer of amphora sherds across the whole casa (herein referred to as anfore). As a result, it is known as the Casa del Anfore (House of the Amphorae). Unoriginal as it may sound, the site itself is actually very unique, and it is the largest Etruscan period structure that has been found in the area. It would also have had a dominating view of the sea, since back in the day the plains below would have been much closer to the sea, although evidence suggests that the Etruscans were capable of reclaiming the land from the sea. Meanwhile, the landscape is dotted with smaller houses (often unexcavated) and tombs. The necropolis of Macchiabuia (the second site) is near to a multitude of other contemporary tombs of the 7th-5th century BC. It is a square room built just a few feet under the surface, which was filled with elaborate grave goods. One nearby tomb turned up 2 iron spits for roasting things!

The team this year mostly consisted of British students, who were there from the 25th August-28th September. Other participants were there for a shorter period of time from Germany, Norway and the USA. Both sites were excavated to a similar standard, with some variation in methodology; the Macchiabuia necropolis team had access to a total station, for example, while the Casa del Anfore site had to make do with string and known base points to work out the relative positions of contexts. The team also got to wash the finds from the sites, and identify what sort of pottery had been found in a series of workshops in the Etruria Nova headquarters.

Map 1: The location of the two sites, just a few kilometres from each other (Google Earth).

Previous Work:

 Prince Tommaso Corsini had previously excavated over 100 tombs in the area in 1908, as well as indin one of the earliest abecedarian tablets in Italy (ibid. 2011). The Etruria Nova project initially tried a number of non-destructive methods to identify more Etruscan settlement near Marsiliana, using aerial photography and field walking (in a forest). The aerial photography was something of an unmitigated disaster, since it failed to find the Casa del Anfore, which was found a few years later (Santoro 2013, pers. comm.). It was fortunate to be found, as it was next to a track that is used for heavy logging and agricultural machinery! Since 2009, the Casa del Anfore has been excavated, with the help of students from all around the world, as it is now an international field school. Meanwhile, a number of smaller houses and a large number of tombs have now been found, but the work has not yet been complete; new tombs are still being found in the area!

Casa del Anfore:

The structure, some 20 by 30 metres in length, was a one-story building, with  a courtyard in the centre, surrounded by at least 6 rooms on 3 sides. The floor was made up of clay, and it is highly likely that the walls were covered in clay too (the layers above the floor level were made up of large amounts of clay and silt) The main features within the casa that had been identified from previous seasons included a drain, with a amphora inside that, upon the use of chemical analysis, had potentially no function. This was all the more remarkable given that the vast majority of the amphorae that had been tested showed their use for fish and vegetable oils (a common combination that resulted in the increased longevity of the meat, hence you could transport the goods further); this leads to the technologically advanced idea that this one amphora was used for collecting rainwater. There was nothing special about the amphora itself, except for this one crucial chemical analysis, and it's position within the house to suggest this function. How wierd is that?

In addition, a large number of the rooms had been excavated, but there were still 3 to finish (one was partially started towards the end of the dig). Each one seemed to have a different function; room L, for example, had turned up a very fancy plate that would have been used for Etruscan banqueting. It had just been left there, possibly abandoned. Bucchero pottery was also fairly common across the site; it is a black colour, quite thin, and was often used in small bowls and the like. Krater pottery was also present, indicating a more localised storage usage. Seriously, go check out the size and shape of them (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krater)! In addition to Kraters, other red-figure wares were also on site (these are Greek pots, from the 7th century BC). It is highly likely that this was a high-status family, or group of families, who lived here, with their dominant view of the coujntryside, facing the sea and with lots of varied pottery, both local and imported from Greece, Egypt and probably the Near East as well.

The house appears to have been abandoned over a short space of time, from the current evidence, with no sign of continued occupation after about the 5th-4th centuries BC. However, in the 18th century, a bandit's hut was set up over the site of the Casa ()



Photo 1: The Casa, taken from the west corner of the house. Rooms G and L are just off to the left of the photo.

Photo 2: A reconstruction of a probable Etruscan storage vessel. Small child for scale!

The main courtyard, it was theorised, would have a central basin, since the drain led to the centre of the courtyard, which was covered in stones. This was the aim of this year's team in the courtyard. Meanwhile, rooms G and L were going to be excavted to the floor level, but there was a lot of amphorae in room G (and a skylight); meanwhile room L had a strange pit-like feature between it and the courtyard.


Photo 3: Taken from within the Casa, this was the courtyard, with some of the stones removed. 

So the results? Well, the courtyard team found a LOT of stones, but didn't quite make it to the level of the theorised basin (effectively the ground level). A shame, but it is likely that if it was there, it will be found next year. Room G, meanwhile, just kept turning up more and more pottery as they kept digging! They also got a lot fo cup fragments, which was unusual. Between rooms G and L, some dispute arose as to whose room got to claim the iron door hinge and associated bronze arrow-shaped object as their own (it was right in the middle fo the doorway!). Finally, the pit in room L looked like one large post hole, until a significant amount of moisture was found underneath a layer of ordered tiles; this looks likely to be a deep square-shaped well! I was so very excited when I was told this; I had been working on that pit for 3 weeks straight! But, why would you have both a well and a water drainage system? Maybe they were in use at diffeent times; it is a question that has not been fully answered yet! Incidentally, the majority of the pottery we excavated dates from  around the 6th-5th centuries BC. To put that into perspective, Rome was a small town at best, and the Iron Age Brits were still throwing metal objects into rivers!


Photo 4: One of the team carefully excavating broken pieces of Etruscan cup from room G with a fine brush.


Photo 5: The well! A lot of the tiles had been taken out by this stage, but you can see some of them, and the roughly square shape of the infill.


Necropolis of Macchiabuia:

Meanwhile, the necropolis of Macchiabuia, several kilometres away, was also being excavated. The term necropolis, in this case, was being used to describe a multitude of burials; they are dotted all around this area of land! Often dating to around the 7th century BC (i.e. either contemporary or before the use of the house).
Their shaped was relatively consistent: an underground square room that often had no entrance to it, but stuffed with material goods as mentioned above. In one tomb nearby, there was a juvenile female burial with 3 "groups" of pottery usage found within the tomb: "la dispensa" (wine and grain residues found within these pots), "l'area privata" (wool making products, glass spindle, and a spit hook (don't ask me how a spit hook is used in the wool manufacturing process!)) and "l'area focolare" (an area containing a small stone circle, that has been tenaciously interpreted as a fireplace). Combine these elements together, and these would not look out of place in the living world of the Etruscans. Hence, these tombs are essentially literal "houses of the dead". Other examples of these square tombs with elaborate domestic items have been found all across Northern Italy and Campania from this period, although some rose above the ground, such as at Vetulonia (http://www.mysteriousetruscans.com/vetluna.html).  Arguably the most impressive tombs were at Tarquinia (although Vetulonia would disput this!), where some 6,000 tombs have been discovered stretching over the entirety of the Etruscan period (also, some of these tombs have beautifully painted walls, which is unheard of anywhere else in Etruscan tombs) (UNESCO)!

Photo 6: One of the tombs from the surrounding area.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to dig on the Macchiabuia site, but from the team I heard that plent yof grave goods were found, as well as cremated remains within one of the tombs, which is extremely promising, because it could be potentially be dated with radiocarbon!


Photo 7: One of the tombs (unexcavated) on the site of the Macchiabuia necropolis. How far could it stretch underground?

Post-Excavation

In preivous years, the Casa del Anfore has been made into a virtual model in a Geographical Information System, which has enhanced our understanding of the structure and of the surrounding area, as well as better explaining to the public about what the site would have looked like.This year's work at the Casa will also be added to the virtual reconstruction (correct at time of writing). All the finds will be assessed, and the best ones may well end up in a museum in Scansano, where a dedicated exhibit has been built to explain the area's Etruscan arcdhaeology and heritage in more detail.

Summary:

So in summary, the dig was amazing for the sheer quantity and variety of finds that were on site. From Greek wares to wells to cremated remains that could potentially be human, we have a lot of Etruscan activity around Marsiliana. Next year, more excavations are planned for both the Casa and potentially for some more of the tombs in the area. The relationship between the well and the rainwater pottery needs to be answered, but crucially, in an area where rainfall has always been quite low, we now have the evidence to show that long term settlement would have been possible, without relying on climate patterns that have so often been the ruin of other civilisations. The question I want to ask is why did the occupants of this house just simply abandon this property? Did a combination of local weather patterns work against the occupants? Disease? Were economic or social forces at work against them? Or did the occupants simply find a new opportunity elsewhere, that involved suddenly abandoning everything they had to set up a new life elsewhere? Perhaps we will never know!

Meanwhile, the significance afforded to the Etruscan dead has been emphasised here, with the location of the domestic areas not far from the places of the dead, although their spaces have been demarcated very clearly. For them, death appears to have been another step towards the afterlife, much like some other contemporary societies (like the Egyptians and their pyramid building for their pharoahs of the Old Kingdom), which was regarded quite differently than it is today.

References:

Humphrey, N, Kacorzyk, J, Pallechi, S and Santoro, E., 2011, Life and Death of an Etruscan Settlement, Etruria Nova Onlus, Italy

The Mysterious Etruscans, Vetluna (Roman Vetulonia), http://www.mysteriousetruscans.com/vetluna.html, last accessed 01/10/2013, last updated 02/05/2009.

Santoro, E., September 2013, personal communication to some members of the team concerning the failure of the aerial photography to find the Casa del Anfore(!).

Wikipedia, Krater, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krater, last accessed 01/10/2013, last updated 23/09/2013.

UNESCO, last accessed 01/10/2013, Etruscan Necropolises of Cerveteri and Tarquinia, http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1158, last updated 

Appendix:

All photographs were taken from my Vivitar F128. All rights reserve by the author.