Rome is great! I had a very productive first day. I rolled out of my hotel room at 8:45 after eating the nice complimentary breakfast they offer and went to the Castle Saint Angelo. It used to be a tomb for the Emperor Hadrian, but the Pope got to it and made it his own fort to hide in when Rome was under attack. There wasn’t too much to see there. There was a lot of weapons (some really pretty engraved ivory guns), old empty chests the Pope stored his treasure in, and beautiful views of Rome (the best part). I got there when it opened so it was empty and was able to do everything in an hour.
Then I went to the supermarket down the street and bought food. 27 Euro bought me a lot of good stuff – oranges, crackers, cream cheese, pesto, stuffed zucchini flowers, prosciutto, bread, yogurt, plastic spoons, orange soda, lemon soda (seriously the best stuff ever), sparkling water, and three mini bottles of Prosecco. I also picked up some cookies to stash in my bag as snacks during the day when I am out. I figured it was a good way to spend my money to avoid expensive things when out and about. There is also a specialty food store around the corner from where I am staying that has imported food from around the world, including the States. They sell Jell-O for 2 Euros a box ($3) — yikes! I have a mini fridge in my room so I am able to store all this stuff. There is a kitchen here that I can use, but I really don’t want to do dishes on my vacation.
I dropped off my food, ate lunch in my room, and then headed out again. I went to the Vatican Museum for 2 hours and saw the things I missed last time, mostly Egyptian and Middle Eastern art. I walked right it because the lines disappear around noon (thank you Rick Steves). The Roman Statue gallery was closed, which made me realize how lucky I was so see it the last time I was in Rome!! There was a really cool relief carving of dead bodies floating down a river that was meant to show the power of the king who erected it. It was pretty gruesome, but beautifully done! I saw the Sistine Chapel again, and also Laocoon battling the snakes. I didn’t take any pictures (lame) because I felt that I had done that the last time I was there.
I rolled out of the Vatican and headed to the Spanish Steps. Last time I was in Rome all of the Egyptian monoliths were under conservation and restoration, so I couldn’t see them. They look beautiful now! The one at the top of the Spanish Steps looked great! I wandered around the shops down there and had fun people watching. It is a beautiful place in the city! I wandered down to the Piazza de Populo to see the Egyptian monolith there, too, as I had missed seeing it as well for the same reasons. I tried to catch the Metro back to my hotel room (it was 2:30 so siesta was happening and things were shut down), but the Metro was not going due to some issue that I could not get because I don’t speak Italian. I decided instead to walk down the Tiber River (it was really beautiful — glad things worked out that way!) and went to see my favorite thing in Rome, the Ara Pacis. I was only in there maybe a half an hour, but I absolutely love the structure because it is covered in friezes of people, plants, animals, Roman myths, and other designs. I walked back to my hotel room and got there around 4 pm and decided to call it a day since my feet were getting pretty tired from the trekking.
I wound up meeting up with Clare, Meg and Erin at the Pantheon at night for dinner. We roamed about for a bit (we got lost), ate salads at a fabulous hole-in-the-wall restaurant, and got gelato. I would up coming home past midnight! Yikes!
I woke up super early today and went to the Capitoline Museum. It was really cool to see in person some Roman statues that have been showing up in lectures for years. I went back to a paper store I saw near the Pantheon the night before and chatted with the lady who runs the shop. I found some really pretty engraved notes with Roman ruins on them that I cannot wait to use! I went back to my apartment for a light snack before meeting up with Meg and Erin for lunch. We got falafel (super cheap) and roamed about Rome for a good four hours looking at different shops. It was a nice, relaxing day! We are planning on meeting up for dinner tonight because Meg and I leave tomorrow (Meg is going to London).
So, in 36 hours (14 of those flying), I will be home in LA!
Rome Photos http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=48373561&l=29a8bf247e&id=2521574
Week Five has arrived, which means that everyone here seems to “hate” everyone else. This is bound to happen after living together 24-7 for such a long time. All of our nerves are really shot.
Lots of strange/cool stuff happened this week!
1) We saw Google Maps mapping out the ancient city of Pompeii! They had a bike with a cart attached to it that had cameras to photograph the city form all angles. It was fun to watch them struggle along the cobblestone streets in the morning before all the visitors arrived.
2) A woman I took Latin with at UCLA dropped by and said “hi” at the trench. We are friends on Facebook, so she knew to look for me in Pompeii.
3) I had an allergic reaction to something and lost all feeling in my hand for about a half an hour. (Feeling has returned thanks to antihistamines!) However, now my hand looks like it was dipped in acid. Grossness.
4) I got all of the VCP’s pottery from last year sorted. Woot, woot!
Last night we went to Luigi’s house for dinner. He is the owner of the bar we eat breakfast and order take out sandwiches from every day. The VCP has become friends with him and the other people who work in the bar over the last three years. We had lots of barbecued meat, fresh cheese, grilled veggies, etc. and one of Luigi’s friends broke the ice by playing songs on his guitar in both English and Italian. We had a blast!
This morning we woke up earlier than usual on our day off and took the train to Baia, an ancient town that was famous for its Imperial baths. One professor at State called it “the Malibu of Ancient Rome”. Half of the ruins are underwater, so we booked a boat and snorkeled over them for over an hour and a half. You could still see plaster on the walls, stairs, and pottery shards littering the bottom of the ocean. We at lunch and then most of the group walked up the hill to see the ruins that are still left above the ocean. They had recently been updated with new signs and had great lighted walkways that I am sure look awesome at night.
Most of the underwater ruins were villas whereas the bath complex and a few temples are still up and dry.
Here is where Baia is located: Link
Baia photos http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2536207&id=2521574&l=ca9ee84b7a
Good-bye, Peristyle! Post excavation is over for the season. Now I am working with the VCP for a week and a half. Yesterday I sifted buckets from the trench for hours. It was a very physically exhausting and dirty day compared to how I spent the last four weeks. Pottery sorting meant I got covered in fine dust. Now I am getting completely soiled! We had a nice end of the season party by going to the beach for half the day in Sorrento and then to Delfino’s for dinner. Twas very exciting and yummy!
Internet went dead for a few days. Here are some links to photos I have been meaning to post:
Pompeii at Dusk and Capri: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2535779&id=2521574&l=7b85be62ee
Herculaneum and Adventures with Indy http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2535781&id=2521574&l=eba78f6279
Complete Pottery Pieces and the Day Off in Sorrento http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2535783&id=2521574&l=0ddc1e2c4f
Week four has already begun. I only have two more weeks left in Pompeii!
Indiana Jones points out some nice opus reticulatum at Herculaneum.
Last weekend I went on two excellent day trips: Herculaneum and Capri. I went to Herculaneum, another ancient town buried in the same eruption as Pompeii, with the VCP. We specifically went to go see the carbonized fishing boat that hadn’t been on display for ten years. The boat had been cleaned and stabilized on this gigantic spring cushion to keep it safe during an earthquake. It was really neat! There was a ton of fishing equipment, including carbonized rope, on display in the same room. We roamed around the site for two hours before heading back to camp to chill out. I went into Pompeii Scavi with some fellow group members and explored areas closed to tourists (we have passes that let us nearly everywhere in the city). We all ate dinner with another archaeology team based out of Valencia, Spain, that evening. We went over to their rented home in the neighboring town and ate a really good meal of mussels, couscous, and other strange grain dishes with vegetables in them. It was fun to practice Spanish for a bit and learn about another culture. They were all really welcoming and we plan on hosting them for a dinner in Camping Zeus soon.
On Sunday, I ventured out on my own to Capri. I didn’t go to Capri the last time I was in Pompeii, so I really wanted to make sure I made it out there this time. I got to Capri around 10 am and roamed about the shops in Capritown before walking the brutal 40 minute uphill hike to the Villa Jovis, Emperor Tiberius’ home on the island. It was pretty exhausting, but there were plenty of opportunities to stop and enjoy the view for a bit before continuing on. I got into the villa for free because I showed the attendant my Pompeii student pass. The villa is really small and not crowded which made it enjoyable. I headed back down the hill (much easier!) and was back in Sorrento around 2 pm. The Villa Jovis was empty, but the rest of Capri was too crowded with tourists to be enjoyable. I ate lunch in the Fauno Bar in the town center of Sorrento before heading back to Pompeii.
This week we are taking out all of the nice, complete pottery pieces the AAPP has stored to figure out what we have. A lot of the complete/near complete pieces surprisingly get lost in the shuffle because they are kept in separate locations from the other pottery in the storage room. There are some really cool things and I hope to get pictures of them tomorrow.
Photos will be posted soon!
Allow me to be frank: I’ve really wanted a burrito since I got here.
There is something about the flavor and texture combination of cool lettuce, grilled meat, vegetables, cheese, etc. rolled up in a warm tortilla.
Wednesday night I made the announcement that I was going to make burritos the next time it was my turn to plan dinner. This seemed like nearly an impossible task because the market in Pompei doesn’t stock the right ingredients. Some brainstorming had to be done!
Today Steph and I went to the GS (the name of the Safeway equivalent supermarket chain in Italy) for an hour buying what was to become the most ultimate burrito experience one could hope for outside of the Western Hemisphere. We got iceburg lettuce, a hard white cheese, plain yogurt (they don’t have sour cream here), mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, bell peppers, zucchini, white beans, mild chili peppers, oregano, cumin, a hot powdered pepper, taco sauce (made by Uncle Ben’s!), tortillas (sooooo expensive – over 3 Euros for a pack of 8!), and flan dessert cups. We roasted the bell peppers and zucchini over a grill with the chicken. The other veggies went into pans and heated over the fire. Dane made some kick ass pico de gallo. Everyone was so excited to have something other than Italian food! We normally eat salad, cold meats, cheese and bread for dinner so burrito night was a welcome change. The flan cups were a surprise, too, since we normally don’t eat dessert. The whole meal wound up costing less than 5 Euros a person despite the high cost of the tortillas. I think we will be eating burritos again very, very soon!
On Wednesday we had a really nice meal in a restaurant located in Vico Equense, a hillside town just outside of Sorrento. It had a view overlooking the Bay of Naples and we could watch the sunset/city lights. It was really nice and the pizza was reasonably priced.
Pottery is going well. I found a shard that had a bubble in it. If the bubble exploded in the kiln, the potter would have been pretty pissed off. Hilary also took out all the alabaster artifacts and I had fun looking at them. Next week is my last week of pottery (the team is only there for four weeks) and then I work with the VCP. I made a lot of progress this week and finally got to a group of SUs that didn’t have a trillion large bags of pottery to sort through. A good day of work is about 20 kilos of pottery and numbering about 250 shards. I’m still enjoying the work and I am really happy to have spent my summer learning from a good team.
Even better news is that the kitten has a home! A guy who works outside the ruins in a restaurant took the cat for his granddaughter. There are a lot of stray animals in Pompeii so it is a blessing that kitty has a new, safe home. Huzzah!
Tomorrow we are going to Herculaneum and on Sunday I plan on venturing out to Capri.
Photos this week include views of the Bay of Naples and the quaint hillside town of Vico Equense, pottery/artifacts, and dinner. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2532277&id=2521574&l=7ad9dae374
Apparently I am allergic to something in the campsite and now I am really congested and have a happy rash on my stomach. (I brought a pharmacy with me so I am coping.) I originally planned on going to Capri today, but instead I went for a walk around Pompeii since I was feeling a little uncomfortable. There is no point in spending a ton of money to get to Capri and then not enjoy it!
Yesterday we all went to the Naples Archaeology Museum for the day. They just reopened their fresco exhibits (they were closed since 1996). They restructured the entire exhibit and grouped the frescoes by house instead of by theme, allowing one to understand each space individually. It was really, really awesome to see! I forgot to put my camera’s card in it so I only managed to squeeze in 10 photos. Alas!
Anyway, back to my day off in Pompeii. I ran around for a few hours and got into whatever houses were open. I didn’t see any new homes; however, a lot of changes (all good) have been happening in the city. Many houses are currently under major conservation. It is nearly impossible to keep up a site that old with such high traffic. I finished off the day washing some of the VCP’s pottery and pulling weeds to clear out their new trench. It was fun to use a trowel again.
-
- We put cookies on the shrine near one of the trenches. A lizard came and had a feast!
-
- Stone steps that were perfectly spaced to allow carts to pass and people to cross the street with ease.
-
- A storeroom of amphorae in one of the homes.
-
- These are copies; the original broze statues are currently at the LACMA exhibit.
-
- 1/3 of Pompeii is underground. As you can see, a church was built on top of it before they knew the site existed.
-
- More ancient graffiti.
-
- Ruins that have to be fully excavated.
-
- A downpipe from a second story.
-
- A house that is currenly under excavation.
-
- Does this make you feel unsafe?
-
- Extreme archaeology!
Yikes! I was almost done with another entire trench, but as fate would have it the last SU was a mountain! There were hundreds of shards to sort through and multiple pots to reconstruct. Armed with a roll of masking tape, I painstakingly went through and found all the matching shards for each pot and pieced them together. The real trick was that this pottery came from a cistern fill, so some of the pot shards had lots of water damage and discoloration while other sherds from the same pot had no damage at all! It took a day and a half to find all the matching bits.
-
- These shards match in coloration on this side…
-
- …but on this side they don’t match in color at all!
Today I went back into the dungeon of a storeroom the AAPP has and found the remaining artifact boxes for the rest of the trenches I have to sort this summer. Some of them have been presorted incorrectly, which means that I have to empty out hundreds of little bags and redo the work. I finally got smart and started to take my iPod up to site with me so I can listen to music while sorting through the mayhem.
Last night we went out to an Italian flea market in the parking lot of the supermarket in Pompei. When we were walking back to the campsite, all of the lights in the city suddenly went out. It was pretty strange to walk home with only car lights illuminating the sidewalk. We also saw some cops arresting a transvestite prostitute at the bottom of the hill from the entrance to ancient Pompeii. A strange night, indeed.
Photos this week include pots that I pieced together and one more adorable kitty photo! Kitty’s name is Julia Felix, which is the name of one of the houses in Pompeii.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2528225&id=2521574&l=8eb926fa84
Meg and Claire draw a site plan.
Week Two in Pompeii is underway. I have Sundays off so I spent the morning up on site with the Via Consolare Project working on my French and watching them dig. They were hard at work planning the additions to their existing trench. Each layer has to be drawn and its depth recorded before any actual digging can take place. Consequently, project members are often carrying a giant piece of particle board upon which they draw the plans. I got to review how to use survey equipment and was happy that I still knew what to do! It was nice to sit in the shade and read.
Peristyle News: Tomorrow I will finish another huge group of pottery and move onto another trench. I had three big bags of pottery left to sort this afternoon with only a half hour to go so I packed up early and headed back to camp. Katie, who works in the peristyle with me doing small finds, has a stray kitten that she
Some Terra Sigillata from one of the SUs I sorted today. I hope to write my MA thesis on this pottery
is nursing back to health. She let the little guy run around the peristyle today. He was in my scale (he weighs about 500 grams), in find trays, and even was batting around some of my pottery sherds before he got booted back to the floor. He spent most of the afternoon asleep on a pile of tarps in the shade.
Be sure to check out my photos this week! Photos of the campground, the kitten, and VCP’s trench are up!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2527142&id=2521574&l=ea22f15ac1
I’ve survived my first week in Pompeii, and it has already been an adventure! I arrived in the middle of a Neapolitan Monsoon rainstorm on Sunday at Camping Zeus, which is located right outside the main gates to the entrance of Pompeii. I was handed a Peroni and waited out the storm before setting up my tent. (Photos of my itty bitty living space will be posted in another blog.)
Here’s a summary of how a typical work day runs for me:
Every morning we are on site at 8:00 am, which means that we rise around 6:30 to get ready and then go get a cappuccino and possibly a pastry at the light rail station bar/restaurant. After a quick walk through the city I arrive at the House of the Vestals where the pottery team operates because that is where AAPP’s (Anglo American Project in Pompeii — the last dig I went on) storage of 15 years of artifacts is kept.
Sorting pottery by type. Only the diagnostic pieces are left to number before rebagging them.
David and Hillary keep me pretty busy processing pottery. First, I pull out all the trays of pottery from a particular trench (each trench has been pre-numbered). Within each trench are multiple layers, what we call stratigraphic units (SUs). Each trench has many of these SUs and the pottery found in each SU is labeled in a bag with the number assigned to the SU. I put these SU bags of pottery in numerical order before opening any of them up. Sometimes an SU can have six huge plastic bags of pottery, and sometimes they have just a few shards. It is a real toss up.
I open each SU’s bags and sort the pottery into different groups (ex: amphora, lamps, black gloss, and red slip). I weigh each group and record any interesting notes about the whole assemblage of pottery from that SU. All diagnostic sherds (sherds with a bit of rim, base, handle, or distinct decoration) I number carefully and place into separate plastic bags from the rest of the sherds that don’t have anything special about them.
David and Hillary are looking at a nice bit of red gloss ware.
Yes, I do this for 8 to 9 hours a day and love every moment of it! (You all knew I was crazy.) Eventually they will teach me how to spot date the pottery to figure out how old the SU is.
I eat lunch with the SFSU Pompeii team near their trenches in another part of Pompeii. Dinner is usually at the campsite unless we go into Pompei to eat in a restaurant (the modern town only has one ‘i’).
Today we went to the Villa Capo, which is a Roman ruin on the far end of Sorrento. We swam through a Roman arch into the sea. The water in the lagoon area was a brilliant green when you swam under the arch out into Mediterranean. After tuckering ourselves out swimming, we went to another part of the villa and relaxed while watching the ferries going to Capri and Italians enjoying the beautiful Saturday afternoon on their speedboats zip by us. Perfect! We ate dinner in Sorrento before heading back to our campsite to clean up for tomorrow.
More Photos of Munich http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2525381&id=2521574&l=3f760975e0
Photos from Pompeii and Sorrento http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2525384&id=2521574&l=843e4ec1d2
Photos from Villa Capo http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2525387&id=2521574&l=ca3446cc71
