20 June 2008

Week-end!

Summer has arrived with a vengeance, as it's been sunny and over 30 here for the past couple of days, so everyone was feeling the end of the week today. Add that to our press conference on Monday and the near complete absence of unwashed finds and we were left with little to do. That meant a free afternoon for the American ragazzi, who prepared for their big weekend trip to Rome and Pompeii.
Yesterday we had a second ancient urbanism lecture and I gave them a couple of assignments to be done "on-site" in Rome and Pompeii. Beats the heck out of looking at pictures in Madison.
On the site, we're getting a much better sense of what's going on as we clear out more of the collapsed material ("crollo" is everyone's new Italian word) to leave the original walls of whatever building it was that we're working around. Some nice intact plaster on a few walls, and more coins - some even datable! - to help with chronology.
No photos as yet and I haven't scanned the excellent drawings by Gen Puleo, but we've got one of these from a good context: