Week 2

Ciao Tutti!

It is me again. Still no luck with my wireless card, oh well it
really is not a big deal. Joe has lent me his computer one day so I
could check my emails, and I still get the unsecure internet from
behind the hotel.

When I last wrote it was il Palio, but I sent my email before the race
had happened. This year Selva Contrada (the forest neighborhood) won,
I was watching the race from the Commie Bar in town. It was an
intense race this year, the Unicorn rider got thrown from his horse
and then the horse fell. Both rider and horse were okay that evening
(I saw that the horse had walked out of the race, but I don’t know
what happened after that). I went into Siena on Saturday and watch
them take apart the racetrack which I have not been able to do before
because of work. The 4th of July was low key this year since it was a
Sunday and most people were traveling or lounging around. I spent the
day in the Mag getting work done and then went home and cooked some
chicken and potatoes and made a tomato and zucchini goulash. It was
good.

We had our second week of work, and what a week it was. My trench is
fully open now and we are through the top layer, which tends to be the
slowest layer to get through. The students have been finding a lot of
metal slag (slag is refuse from metal working), and because of this
Tony came up to the hill on Thursday and said take out all the stumps
in my trench so we can get a clearer view of the trench and any
possible soil changes. The idea is that since there is so much metal
waste in my trench that there must be metal production in the area,
and typically the way to see that is with a color change in the soil.
All the students said their favorite part of the week was seeing my
face after Tony said remove all the stumps. You see, my trench was at
least 50% covered with stumps. It took all day to remove them but my
trench is now free of all stumps.

Yesterday we were pick axing through the mounds of dirt left by the
stump and found a lot of cool stuff, although not as much as Ann’s
trench. She had 40 different special finds (slag, bronze, coil made
pottery, decorated pottery, etc). I however found some interesting
decorated pottery, several pieces had this pattern of tiny dots all in
a row.

This week was also the week that Mr Lynch and crew came to visit me.
He had forgotten my email address, so on Monday they just showed up in
town and found the mag (our lab/store room). At lunch I got a call
from Theresa that a group of people were there to see me. So I left
Christina, my assistant trench master, in charge and we down to greet
them and took them on a tour of the hill. It was fun they all enjoyed
the tour (well maybe not the hike). Mr Lynch, Mr. Luckas, Ms.
Vosubugh, Mr. McPhee were all there with their spouses and some other
friends.

I don’t have any plans for this weekend, but next weekend is the long
weekend so I will be getting out of town for then. I might try and
rent a car with some people and go somewhere. Ravenna has been put
into the pool of places, but I would love to see Fiesole or Ostia, so
hopefully next email I will have more travel stories.

We I hope you enjoyed my email. Hope things are going well across the
puddle. See you all soon.

Ciao