On the afternoon of Saturday 4-Oct Jessie & John joined the rest of the Earthwatch volunteers on a tour of Parco Archeologico near Populonia guided by our project director, Dr Carolina Megale. The park, know formally as “Parco Archeologico di Baratti e Populonia”, is close to the beach which rings the Baratti Bay.
This park covers a vast necropolis of tombs dating from the 7th to 3rd centuries BCE. It was rediscovered in the early 1900’s as the iron slag that had covered it was removed for reprocessing.
Dr Carolina Megale as tour guide at Parco Archeoligco in Populonia Italy
The first and largest tomb in the San Cerbone necropolis is called “Tomba dei Carri”. This oval ‘Tumulus type’ dome is listed at 30 metres in diameter, and looked maybe 7m high. [Guidebook: from “Orientalizing Period (7th century BC)”.] It had about a 5′ wall around its base with a narrow access doorway about 3′ high that was locked behind a heavy vault door. And Dr Carolina Megale had the key to the vault.
With the door pulled open & Carolina’s encouragement we crouched our way into the Tomba dei Carri and found a large squarish room in the center with a high conical roof (partially reconstructed). I think that Carolina had turned on the interior lights. There were some low partitions which might have been funeral beds. In a side room of this tomb, when it was first uncovered, was found an intact chariot, now on display in a distant museum. We didn’t see anything laying around but didn’t linger long inside those chambers.
Carolina led us around the entire section of the necropolis down to the smaller road-side Sarcophagus tombs of the 6th BCE.
Then we headed up the hills to the Via delle Cave and the Cava delle Grotte. These are tombs built into the sandstone hills and in the quarry. It was a steep climb to these unique burial chambers. High on the sloping hillside were dozens of narrow slots cut through solid rock leading to a small burial chamber. On the other side of that hill were two levels of chambers cut into a quarry wall, like a townhome.
With a thorough dose of burial practices of these early Etruscans, we ate well that Saturday night back in Populonia Stazione.
On the Go with John and Jessie 