Overview

The Rutgers University Archaeological Field School in Italy, in operation since 2012, is a Rutgers Study Abroad summer program that endeavors to teach undergraduate and graduate students archaeological field skills and methods. Among these are: excavation techniques; site recording and management skills; the handling, processing and preserving of site materials, such as mosaics, painted wall plaster, pottery, human remains and other small finds; and field surveying skills through the operation of a total station and geophysical prospection equipment such as ground penetrating radar and magnetometer. Student participants will acquire this training by doing these things on site in Italy under the supervision of academic and professional archaeologists, geophysicists, conservators, and anthropologists. Rutgers professors and graduate students from the Departments of History-Newark, Earth and Environmental Sciences-Newark, Classics-New Brunswick and Anthropology-New Brunswick will all teach and participate in the field school. In addition to fieldwork, there will also be lectures and readings about archaeological methods, and historical and anthropological topics related to the project currently being pursued by the field school, the Upper Sabina Tiberina Project (detailed below). For this project the field school operates in the Tiber River Valley in the northwestern part of the province of Lazio, just about 40 miles upriver from Rome. Participants live and work near the small village of Vacone, excavating a Roman villa site with evidence of Republican, Imperial and post-antique occupation and activity.

Enrollment in the Rutgers Field School is not limited to Rutgers University students, and applicants from other institutions of higher learning are welcome to apply. Although applicants with backgrounds in history, Italian studies, archaeology, anthropology and/or classics are desired, no previous experience or prerequisites are necessary, nor is any particular major or background. Moreover, no knowledge of Italian language is required.

Undergraduate students will receive six course-credits from Rutgers Study Abroad that may be counted toward a variety of departments and majors, including Classical Studies, History, Anthropology, and Art History. For instance, the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers-New Brunswick will accept these as equivalent to 01:070:334 ‘Archaeological fieldwork’ and 01:070:335 ‘Analysis of Archaeological data'. Please consult Prof. Farney (gfarney@rutgers.edu) if you have any questions about how these credits might apply to your situation.

Graduate students can earn either six or three course credits, depending on the track they wish to take. They should consult their departments to see how they will treat the credits for any degree they are pursuing. For six credits, they can participate in the undergraduate regimen in the first half of the course (as noted above), and in the second half in a graduate student only course on site and materials conservation. For the three credits option, graduate students just participate in this conservation course. This intensive course of conservation will build on previous operations and interventions at the site of Vacone conducted by the Italian Archaeological Service. These interventions were “rescue” restorations to preserve the standing architectural remains; during the course of this restoration, floor mosaics were discovered some of which were conserved and removed. In 2012, the Rutgers field school uncovered more mosaic floors and anticipates finding a significant number in the future in addition to these. Some mosaics found last year and the ones we will find in the coming year will need to be restored, and in situ stretches and fragments of painted and sculpted wall plaster will also need conservation. While the work of this course will focus on restoring and conserving these remains, students will also learn about cultural heritage management issues and the role that public history should play in the project, such as in the dissemination of information, the interpretation and public presentation of the material and history uncovered at the site, and the (potential) role of tourism from the site in the local economy.

Living Arrangements for the Field School

For 2013, the field school will operate from July 9 to August 9 (July 28 to August 9 for the graduate conservation course), and participants will live in an agriturismo (a kind of country hotel and restaurant), called Le Colline (http://www.agriturismolecolline.com), located very close to the Vacone villa site (< 2 km). Le Colline has rooms of two to four people, each with a separate bathroom. The agriturismo has internet access and will provide us with a means to do laundry. All meals will be provided at the agriturismo for staff and students Sunday dinner through Friday lunch as part of the program costs. Students will have to pay for their own meals at other times (Friday dinner through Sunday lunch), from the agriturismo or elsewhere. Students will also be able to visit the town of Vacone and other local towns regularly.

Students are encouraged to travel to Rome or other nearby locales on most weekends. On Friday afternoon, staff will drive students to a nearby train-station (Poggio Mirteto) for a direct train into Rome (ca. 45 minutes); likewise, they will pick up returning students on Sunday late afternoon.

During one designated weekend (likely July 20-21), students will stay at the agriturismo in Vacone and we will tour around the local area to see sites and museums of relevance to the field school. Among these will be a trip to Rieti, a local city with Roman and later remains and buildings, large medieval walls, and a substantial archaeological museum. During this weekend the field school will provide breakfasts and dinners, but not lunches; instead, students will have the opportunity to eat lunch in Rieti and in another local community at a restaurant or some other kind of establishment of their own choosing.

Research Aims of the Project

The Rutgers University Archaeological Field School in Italy conducts work to further the research goals of the Upper Sabina Tiberina Project. Our team’s ultimate aim is to assess archaeologically a select cluster of Roman villa sites in the Upper Sabina Tiberina, focusing on the Republican and early Imperial period (third century BCE to first century CE) in order to investigate regional patterns of rural habitation and agricultural exploitation. Our villa sites are situated in an area defined by the Tiber on the east, mountains separating the region from Umbria to the north and the Reatine valley to the East, and the edge of the Farfa river valley to the south (ca. 250 sq. miles). We seek to substantiate archaeologically the point at which the historical characterization of the Sabina in the late Republic and early Empire is perceptible in the rural built environment, providing evidence of agricultural intensification and subsequent economic development. To this end, we are excavating one villa site in the area (Vacone), while conducting geophysical survey at other known villa locations.

GOOGLE EARTH MAP: http://g.co/maps/vspm6

The first part of our strategy is to excavate the villa near the town of Vacone (the “Villa con Criptoportici”) as the cornerstone for a comparative regional project assessing the Roman rural habitation in the area in terms of its scale, mode of agricultural exploitation, and diachronic development. This selective excavation at Vacone will be combined with a ground penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetometer survey of the immediate environs of this villa and other villas in the subject group. Research goals include estimating the size of both the villas and the surrounding land they exploited, assessing the choice of villa locations from the standpoint of topography and ecology, and incorporating a GIS database with detailed physical and chronological information about the group villas.

Our team has selected Vacone for excavation based on information derived from earlier interventions by the office of the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici del Lazio and our own GPR survey of the central area of the villa. The villa has two standing criptoportici (underground chambers/corridors) built in opus incertum style masonry, which would date it to the late Republican period. The interventions supervised and published by Giovanna Alvino of the Soprintendenza in the 1980s shored up these substructures and carried out limited excavation in the area above each criptoportico. The work on the lower criptoportico uncovered a mosaic floor running along the length of its roof. Several thresholds were also unearthed that appear to open into mosaic-floored rooms in the area between the two criptoportici, presumably part of the villa’s domestic quarter. Our GPR survey of this area, conducted in October 2011, confirmed the presence of anomalies consistent with room walls. Exploration of the upper criptoportico revealed a space for the pressing of wine or oil adjacent to the end of the criptoportico, with a channel running down to a collecting basin in the criptoportico itself. Today the portion of the site between the criptoportici, where we have begun excavation, is on publicly owned land, and the remainder of the villa site would seem to be under local farmland and associated privately owned buildings.

South Criptoportico, Vacone

We plan to conduct field-operations at Vacone for five summers, from 2012-2016, followed by several study-seasons to analyze the data collected. Simultaneously, we have begun conducting geophysical survey at some of the other villa locations in the area, notably with the “Terme di Agrippa” villa near Montebuono.

Excavations at Vacone in 2012

Our project’s summer 2012 season concentrated in the area immediately north of a mosaic-floored porticus discovered in 1986-7 atop the lower cryptoporticus, where threshold blocks found during the Soprintendenza’s intervention suggested the presence of rooms facing the porticus. Our excavations identified six rooms with mosaic floors along the porticus.

For a more detailed description (and images!) of the excavations at Vacone, click here.

What to Expect

Living Arrangements for the Field School

For 2013, the field school will operate from July 9 to August 9 (July 28 to August 9 for the graduate conservation course), and participants will live in an agriturismo (a kind of country hotel and restaurant), called Le Colline (http://www.agriturismolecolline.com), located very close to the Vacone villa site (< 2 km). Le Colline has rooms of two to four people, each with a separate bathroom. The agriturismo has internet access and will provide us with a means to do laundry. All meals will be provided at the agriturismo for staff and students Sunday dinner through Friday lunch as part of the program costs. Students will have to pay for their own meals at other times (Friday dinner through Sunday lunch), from the agriturismo or elsewhere. Students will also be able to visit the town of Vacone and other local towns regularly.

Students are encouraged to travel to Rome or other nearby locales on most weekends. On Friday afternoon, staff will drive students to a nearby train-station (Poggio Mirteto) for a direct train into Rome (ca. 45 minutes); likewise, they will pick up returning students on Sunday late afternoon.

During one designated weekend (likely July 20-21), students will stay at the agriturismo in Vacone and we will tour around the local area to see sites and museums of relevance to the field school. Among these will be a trip to Rieti, a local city with Roman and later remains and buildings, large medieval walls, and a substantial archaeological museum. During this weekend the field school will provide breakfasts and dinners, but not lunches; instead, students will have the opportunity to eat lunch in Rieti and in another local community at a restaurant or some other kind of establishment of their own choosing.

A Typical Working Day in the Field School

Participants should be prepared to work hard physically as part of the field school. Muscle power is what moves the earth around as we excavate the remains. We use pick-axes, shovels, hand-picks, trowels and brushes to remove the earth, and we move it away from the trenches with wheelbarrows. At the end of the project, we must “backfill” the trenches with sand, geotextile and more dirt, all by hand. While we work early in the day to avoid the hot Mediterranean sun and encourage you to drink lots of water and take other precautions, it still gets hot. Because of all this, you must be reasonably physically fit to participate in the field school.

We start working on site at 7am and stop ca. 1pm for lunch at the agriturismo. We have a snack-break in the middle of the workday, ca. 10am. You can count on free time after lunch (from ca. 2pm to 430pm) everyday. About two or three days a week, we meet again ca. 430pm to work in the small finds lab (cleaning and sorting pottery and other finds taken from the site) or we have lectures and discussion. When we don’t need to meet for this, you can have that afternoon time off until dinner and then after dinner.

After dinner on some evenings, we will take the members of the group who wish to go to the village of Vacone, or another local community, to roam, hang out at the local café/bar, shop, and meet the local residents. Quiet time at the agriturismo MUST be respected between 1130pm and 600am.

On work-days, Breakfast is at 630am, Lunch is at 1pm, and Dinner is at 8pm.

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Instructors and Project Leaders

	Gary D. Farney (Project Director and Director of Field School) is an Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark. He has participated in a number of excavations in Italy and is a trained numismatist. His research focus is on ancient Italic group identity, including Sabines, and the formation of Roman identity from the various Italic groups.
	Giulia Masci (Site Director) has a PhD from the University of Turin where she teaches and researches. Her primary research interests  include  the  formation  of  Sabine  identity  and  the  concept  of  “Romanization.”  Her  family-home is in the Upper Sabina Tiberina where she has conducted much of her research.
	Dylan Bloy (Field Director) is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. He has not only participated in a half-dozen excavations in Italy and Greece, but has taken a leadership role in several (including the villa excavations at Ossaia de la Tufa in Cortona).
	Kimberly "Max" Brown (Survey Manager and Trench Supervisor), of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, has participated in over a dozen field-archaeology projects around Italy and the Mediterranean, many in a leadership role, with a particular emphasis on both field and geophysical survey.
	Ian "Jim" Travers (Excavation Manager) is a cultural heritage consultant with a proven background in the management of archaeological projects and conservation programs. He has worked as a field archaeologist across four continents, and is adept at bringing this experience to bear in an academic training environment. Ian's work also involves the wider presentation and interpretation of cultural heritage, and he aims to impart a solid understanding of field methods within the wider context of cultural resource management.
	Matt Notarian (Trench Supervisor) is a visiting assistant professor in classical studies at Tulane University. He has participated in a number of archaeological projects in Italy, Greece and the USA, most recently at an imperially owned villa outside of Rome. His research focuses upon the archaeology and survey of Rome’s countryside, particularly the capital’s influence upon regional development.
	Candace Rice (Trench Supervisor) has a PhD in Roman Archaeology from the University of Oxford and is currently a Senior Fellow at the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations at Koç University in Istanbul. She has worked in a supervisory role on excavations in Tuscany, Molise and Lazio, as well as in France and Tunisia. Her research focuses on maritime trade and regional economic development in the Roman Mediterranean.
	Colleen Snyder (Conservation Supervisor) is currently Assistant Conservator of Objects at The Cleveland Museum of Art. She obtained her BA in Mediterranean Archaeology from the University at Buffalo and her MA in Art Conservation from Buffalo State College. Colleen has conserved archaeological materials both in the US and abroad, including Colonial Williamsburg, The Walters Art Museum, the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute, The J. Paul Getty Museum, and The Archaeological Exploration of Sardis.
	Tyler Franconi (Finds Supervisor) is currently finishing his DPhil at the University of Oxford in Roman archaeology.  He has excavated at a number of sites in Italy, Tunisia, and the USA and specializes in the processing and documentation of archaeological finds.  His research focuses on the economic development of Roman Germany as well as rivers in antiquity.
	Melanie Crisfield (Finds Supervisor) is a PhD candidate in Evolutionary Anthropology at Rutgers-New Brunswick. She has participated in a number of archaeological projects in Canada and Kenya, and has experience working with human skeletal remains from both archaeological sites and forensic investigations.
	Lyra D. Monteiro (Assistant Director) is an Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers University-Newark, and holds a PhD in Archaeology and the Ancient World from Brown University. She has participated in archaeological projects in Italy, England, and the United States, and has worked extensively in museums and public history. Her research focuses on the role of narrations of the ancient Mediterranean past in constructing ideas about blackness and whiteness in the early United States.
	Kate Whitcomb (Assistant Director) is a PhD candidate in Classics at Rutgers-New Brunswick, returning in 2013 for another season of field work. Her main research interests include political and social history of the Roman Empire, early Christian social history, Hellenistic history, and Latin literature.
	Marcello 'Mic' Manzoni (Survey Supervisor) is a freelance archaeologist. He received his BA and MA in Archaeology and Cultures of the Ancient World at the Universities of Milan and Bologna, and another MA with the University of Siena in Geotechnology with applications to Archaeology. His main research interest includes the ancient topography of the Italy.
	Gordon Osterman (Survey Supervisor) is a PhD candidate at Rutgers-Newark studying near-surface geophysics in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. He has used geophysical methods to explore cemeteries and archaeological sites in Colorado. His research will focus on developing models to relate hydraulic properties of the subsurface to geophysical measurements.
	Jonathan Algeo (Survey Supervisor) is an incoming PhD candidate at Rutgers-Newark studying near surface geophysics with Lee Slater in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. His research to date has consisted of studying the effectiveness of using GPR common-midpoint soundings to monitor changes in soil water content in response to rainfall events in clay soils.

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Program Costs and Scholarships

Field School Costs

An approximate estimate of costs for the undergraduate participants is $4950 for NJ residents and $5950 for out-of-state residents.

An estimate of costs for the graduate participants in the six credit program is $5695 for NJ residents and $6695 for out-of-state residents.

An estimate of costs for the graduate participants in the three credit program is $3095 for NJ residents and $3595 for out-of-state residents.

These costs include tuition, room and board at the agriturismo, and transportation within Italy for program purposes. Airfare to Rome is not included in these costs, and participants must make their own travel arrangements being sure to arrive on time in Italy and leave only after the program has ended. We will arrange to bring you from Rome’s Fiumicino airport on July 9 and take you out to the field school’s location.

Financial Aid

There are several scholarship opportunities available from sources outside Rutgers for undergraduate and graduate students who wish to participate in archaeological excavations and field schools. Prof. Farney is happy to advise and support you in the process of applying for them:

Minority Scholarship in Classics and Classical Archaeology, sponsored by the American Philological Association (open to undergraduates; due December 14, 2012): http://www.apaclassics.org/index.php/awards_and_fellowships/details/minority_scholarship_in_classics_and_classical_archaeology

Jane C. Waldbaum Archaeological Field School Scholarship, sponsored by the Archaeological Institute of America (open to undergraduates; due March 1, 2013): http://www.archaeological.org/grants/708

DiMattio Celli Family Study Abroad Scholarship, sponsored by the UNICO Foundation, Inc. (open to undergraduate and graduate students of Italian descent; due February 1, 2013): please contact Prof. Farney and consult this .pdf

Etruscan Foundation Fieldwork Fellowship (open to undergraduates and grad students; due February 1, 2013): http://www.etruscanfoundation.org/programs_fieldwork_fellowship.htm

H.R. Butts Summer Scholarship for Fieldwork in Classical Archaeology, sponsored by Eta Sigma Phi (open to undergraduate and graduate members of Eta Sigma Phi; due February 1^st): http://www.etasigmaphi.org/scholarships/archaeological-fieldwork

David D. and Rosemary H. Coffin Fellowship for Travel in Classical Lands, sponsored by the American Philological Association (open to graduate students who are teachers of Latin or Greek at the secondary level; due February 15, 2013): http://www.apaclassics.org/index.php/awards_and_fellowships/details/coffin_fellowship_for_travel_in_classical_lands

The Janice and Herbert Benario Award, sponsored by the Classical Association of the Middle West and South (open to graduate students and teachers of Latin and Greek living in the Midwest, South and Canada; due February 1, 2013): http://www.camws.org/awards/sgb.php

Some limited scholarship money may also be available for Rutgers University-Newark students.  Please inquire with Prof. Farney (gfarney@rutgers.edu) for more information about this.

Students outside of Rutgers should consult their home-departments (esp. Anthropology, Classics, History) and universities who sometimes have scholarships they offer for students to do fieldwork.

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Photo Gallery

To view images taken at the site, click here.