Monthly Archives: September 2014

As we settled into the work at Poggio del Molino, John started taking pictures of a particular corner of our excavation area.  There were two adjacent excavations we were working on; the biggest one, Site A, uncovered the corner of two exterior walls.

Site A was approximately 20 ft wide so 3 & 4 people could work there side-by-side.  It was suspected to have been an outdoor shed with a tile roof.

Site B was nearby, but separate from Site A and much narrower and angled 90deg away.  At most two people could work this site.  This excavation exposed more of the base of one exterior wall that was thought to have been a tower. Site A was exposing another side of this tower.

John took pictures of Site A over our two week tenure, showing about 2 ft of  fill removed.

Supporting all this was the bucket brigade that sustained this fine steam of hand-swept, 2000-year-old debris.  A lot of it was loose sandy soil, but with rocks & tiles mixed in.  It was hauled by volunteers & staff, one bucket and wheelbarrow at a time, up an incline and onto an ever-growing dumpsite.  At best, the dump area separated the large blocks and tile fragments from the soil.  (Oddly, I only saw one worm through the whole two weeks.)  My guess is that we moved 2 to 3 tons of material up to the dumpsite.

The ground is carefully gathered by volunteers sweeping up loose soil and removing larger blocks one at a time.  Besides rocks, mostly it seemed we were picking up roof tile fragments.  Everything was inspected and interesting finds were passed up the chain of interest.  The most interesting finds wound up in a bag identified with the layer id we were excavating.

The excavation stopping points were the layers as determined by Dr Carolina Megale and her staff.  The layers were almost imperceptible color or texture changes in the soil.  At each layer documenting photos were taken by Dr Megale before we began the excavate again.  The layers were numbered and all interesting objects from that layer that were set aside were likewise identified.  Each layer was also documented with descriptive (English) narrative in a project workbook.

30-Sept One corner of Poggio del Molino, I call Site A. The far wall is one side of a former tower.

30-Sept Earthwatch volunteers loosening the soil

1-Oct Documenting a layer

3-Oct

5-Oct

6-Oct

7-Oct

8-Oct What have we learned? Dr Carolina Megale & Helga inspecting excavation results

Before

After

Working the dig at Poggio del Molino near Piombino

On Sunday 28-Sept we took the mid-day train south from Pisa to be met at the railroad station in Campiglia Marittima by the Earthwatch project staff members who transported us to our condo-like home — for the next two weeks — in Popolonia Stazione, near Piombino Italy.

We shared the two-story apartment with two other couples and had an upstairs bedroom. Each workday we were transported to the near-by project site at Poggio del Molino. We each made our own breakfast (John made cheese omelets) and the project provided requested breakfast ingredients for the apartment’s kitchen.  We provided the essential wine & beer.

The project was unearthing a settlement at Poggio del Molino, on Italy’s west coast next to the Tyrrhenian Sea (or could be the Ligurian Sea?), which might have been in existence since about the 7th century BCE as an Etruscan fort, then a farmhouse, then a Roman villa.  The site consisted of wall foundations outlining rooms for the owners, staff and various activities like steam baths & producing fish oil.  The area was prosperous due to local mining and iron mining on near-by Isola d’Elba.

Initially we found the worksite labor much harder than anticipated and we were thoroughly exhausted by the end of the day.  The weather was warm, even hot.  Fortunately we got rain on the 3rd day which precluded more digging until the ground dried out.  For two days we did some alternative projects, including sorting through the Roman-era bones found on a construction site in an urn. This respite helped restore our strength and enabled us to return to the dig with renewed energy.

The workday started at 8:45am.  A mid-morning snack and lunch were provided at the work site.  We ended the day at 5pm and were transported back to Populonia Stazione.  Diners for the volunteers had been arranged at the adjacent resort, Poggio all’Agnello, so each evening we walked the short distance to the resort’s dining room.  The three-course fixed menu food served at the resort was of uneven quality, ranging from mediocre to excellent.

The work at Poggio del Molino consisted of carefully excavating the designated area around the walls of the villa/fort, supervised by the staff.  The basic daily tools were gloves, a small trowel, a hand brush, a dustpan, a bucket and knee pads.  At the start, the ground was loosened up with a pick, then we set to removing the exposed rocks & soil by hand sweeping the soil into a bucket, and picking up the larger stones and roof-tiles.  The staff oversaw our efforts and checked carefully for interesting artifacts and signs of a new ‘layer’, indicating another strata of history.  It was slow work on our hands and knees shifting the soil & rocks into the buckets while others were slinging the full buckets over to the waiting wheelbarrows and hauling them up to the dump just outside the site’s fence.