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Excavation

  • Poggio Colla
  • Vicchio di Mugello
  •  
  • Italy
  • Tuscany
  • Florence
  • Vicchio

Tools

Credits

  • The Italian Database is the result of a collaboration between:

    MIBAC (Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali - Direzione Generale per i Beni Archeologici),

    ICCD (Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione) and

    AIAC (Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica).

  • AIAC_logo logo

Summary (English)

  • A five week excavation season focused on exploring the extent of the archaeological remains on the North West slope of the hill. Previous work in this area (1999-9, 2008-10, 1012) had concentrated at a single location and recovered remains of Orientalizing Period stone quarrying, later (probably Archaic) ceramic kilns, evidence for textile working, craft activity and possibly disturbed remains of Orientalizing tombs. The aim of the 2013 season was to explore some outcrops of rock, identified in 2012 that showed signs of being worked and to establish the limits of the Etruscan occupation on the hill slope by trial trenching and geophysical survey (magnetometry and ground penetrating radar). Ten trenches (NW6-16) were excavated across an area of hill slope c.150 × 50m to assess and sample the archaeological remains.

    NW6 was positioned to explore a series of orthogonal cuts in the natural bedrock. Ten metres down the slope to the North a 3.5×3.5m trench, NW7, was positioned to include a larger outcrop of bedrock the Western side of which was cut straight. On the opposite side of NW6 a small trench NW16 was excavated 20m up slope to the South in an attempt to ascertain the origin of the abraded finds that had washed down into trench NW6. The 2.5×2.5m trench was positioned against a large outcrop of bedrock. A further 20m uphill to the South, a 6×4m trench NW8 was located on the top of a large mound on a terrace of the hill slope beneath the arx, to test the hypothesis that it might be a tumulus. Some 75m to the west a 5×5m trench (NW9) was located to investigate orthogonal cuts in the bedrock around a hollow, similar to those observed in NW6 A further 10m to the East, on the same terrace, a third trench (NW14 ) was more productive. This 3×2m trench revealed a wall running Southwest-Northeast constructed of large roughly shaped limestone boulders with smaller stones in-filling the gaps between the boulders. The last boulder in the Southwest corner of the trench may be a corner block, and if so, the return of the wall would be in alignment with boulders in trench NW12 and the large outcrop of rock in NW11. This evidence suggests there may have been stone structure in this area but without a tiled roof. The relatively early date of the ceramics suggests that this could be the earliest stone structure yet found on Poggio Colla.

    Some 150m to the East, at the location of the earlier excavations two small trenches were excavated to the north and the East of trench PC18 in the area of the hill slope where the archaeological strata were being eroded from the hill slope along the edge of the access track. Only small areas of archaeological deposits were found beneath the hill wash containing small quantities of Etruscan ceramics.

  • Phil Perkins- Open University 

Director

  • Gregory Warden - Southern Methodist University – Division of Art History

Team

  • Ann Steiner - Franklin and Marshall College
  • Gretchen Meyers - Franklin and Marshall College
  • Michael L. Thomas - University of Texas at Austin

Research Body

  • Franklin and Marshall College
  • Southern Methodist University
  • The University of Pennsylvania

Funding Body

  • Poggio Colla Field School
  • Southern Methodist University

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