We got in Saturday night and met up for dinner ... delicious! From our dinner table, we watched the fireworks show and saw people on stilts parading throught the streets.

Then we went out to all of the clubs and discotheques - So much fun! The culture for parties here is so different than in the States, and everyone stays out until morning.

We took the first train back in the morning at 8am, hoping to get back before the train strike, but the strike ended up starting when we were only 10 miles from Vicchio. The train stopped in Borgo San Lorenzo at 11, and we were stranded until 2pm until our house-mom Leah came and picked us up ... long day! We are the only ones back at the house right now, and hopefully no one else gets stranded!

The church is beautiful! The floor is a giant sundial that tells you what day of the year it is based on where the sun hits the floor; so cool! It was originally set to be larger than St. Peter's in Rome, but the Vatican took away the funds halfway through, so the building was never finished.

After the church, we went to the Archaeological museum. It was amazing! They have so many pieces and they are all on display. Where most museums would have things put in storage, they have everything out, and the shelves go nearly to the ceiling! A really wonderful museum!

We had the most amazing lunch ... now I know why they call it "Bologna Grassa" or Fat Bologna! It was so, so, so yummy!

To walk off our huge meal, we went to the Two Towers and climbed to the top of the tallest, 500 steps!

When we finally made it to the top, it was worth the treacherous climb ... we could see out over all of Bologna! It was absolutely beautiful!

Then we went to catch the train to Rimini! Kyle decided to come with us and celebrate La Notte Rosa with Matt, Mindy and me.

After work today most of the students left to go on travels, but 6 of us stayed behind to have a Fourth of July party with the staff. We had another fabulous dinner and then ice cream cake.

I am leaving first thing in the morning for Bologna, where I will meet up with Joanna, Kyle, Isa, Cathy, Anna, and Christy to tour the city! Tomorrow night I head to Rimini for La Notte Rosa with Matt and Mindy! I can't wait!!

Dr Warden talked us through all of the significant finds that they have had, and we got to handle them to see what kinds of things were up on the site and to know more about what we will be seeing up there in the next few weeks.

We also had a lecture from Provost Ann Steiner, from F&M, about ceramics and the different types that the Etruscans had and the meanings and purpose of the types of ceramics.

We then went over to see Jess Galliano and Lynn, the paleoethnobotanists, to learn about how they do paleobotany on the soil and finds from the site. They use a technique called floatation - they pull out the seeds and plant remains from the soil to find out what kind of plants and grains were being used during the time of the Etruscans. It is really amazing how much they can learn from a bucket of dirt!

We then learned about putting pottery back together when it comes down in sherds. We were given bags of ceramic sherds that had been found on the hill, and we looked through and found where the pieces joined together so that the conservators can then put the ceramic back together. It was like a huge puzzle with no picture! I found four different joins of different pots, which was really exciting for me!

What is really interesting about this layer is that no one knows for sure where it came from. There are three possibilities that have been discussed: it could be decaying mud-brick from the destroyed temple, a fill layer that was meant to purposefully cover the temple after destruction, or, least likely, it could be from erosion. There are flaws with each of these hypotheses, though, and we will have to keep looking at this layer to figure it out.

I also fell on my face running up the hill in front of a bunch of Italian high school students who were touring the sight ... but mostly only my pride was hurt!

We had delicious dinner tonight! I ate at Guardia, the house across the vineyard, and we had the most amazing ribs and pasta and veggies - Yummy!

It is an amazing technology and gives a comprehensive view of the entire mountain and can link in to show sight lines to other Etruscan sites! I worked on inputing the data from the corings that we had done into a giant database that links into the GIS.

After it was all inputted, Jon showed me what he does to make a map, and we made one (see left) of the area that I had cored last week with Thijs and Kyle. It shows exactly where we found habitation layers as well as what the elevation and terracing were like in the inhabited areas to give a better idea of where the Etruscans built. It was really, really cool to see this technology at work!

So far today, we were mostly just removing the humus layer of soil to get down to the first archaeological layer. Lots of work, but at least we are in the shade!

It was nice to be back and to hear about everyone's weekend travels. I am super tired from traveling and working ... so off to bed!

We walked all of the winding roads to the city walls on all the sides. We went through all of the different Contrada, where everyone was festive and cheering for their team and having parties in the streets!

We saw them do the flag throwing and someone from the Snail Contrada almost impaled Mindy and me with the flag! It was so cool!

The culture is all about the horse races on Wednesday! Each neighborhood ran through the streets with their horse singing their songs, and everyone was wearing shirts and scarves and flags supporting their Contrada!

In the morning, they did the horse selection where they draw straws to see which Contrada gets which horse for the races. We weren't able to get into the packed Campo, so we watched through peoples' butts, haha!

Then they did 6 trial races and two of the jockeys were dismounted! The horses can win even without a jockey.

The town was buzzing all day long with the excitement of the festival and it was such a blast to be a part of it!! Now we are headed back home to Vigna ... I wonder how everyone else's weekend was.

Then we all went to the Archaeological Museum where Dr. Warden walked us through the whole museum and talked about all of the pieces on display and their significance, as well as what some of them mean to our studies at Poggia Colla. We even got to see some closed exhibits (which of course is where all the good stuff is)!!

After touring and the museum, the students split off and went to lunch. Kyle knew of the most amazing restaurant and we ate family style until we couldn't fit anything more in our stomachs! It was fabulous!!!!! We had rigatone made in a wood fire, pasta with chingale ragu, and green gnocchi with a tomato cream sauce!! (in photo: Kyle, Joanna, Me, and Mike at lunch)

Then, Leigh, Mindy, Matt, Alex F, Joanna, Cameron, Jayme, Lisa, Cathy, and I jumped on the bus and headed for Siena!! When we got there, we could already see that it was amazing! The whole city is medieval and all of the streets are teeny and winding around the Campo (left) in the center. Il Palio is on Sunday but the festivities started today, so the whole place is abuzz with excitement and locals supporting their Contrada (neighborhood)!

We wandered the city and went to the Duomo (right), which has amazingly beautiful marbles. I could have walked this city forever!!

One way that this group is exploring the field is through a technique called shovel test pits, or STP. In this method, a 50cm pit is dug every 5 meters in a grid across the field. All of the soil from the pit is sifted and any archaeological inclusions are pulled out and put into bags. By analyzing the inclusions, they will be able to get a better idea of where other buildings and activity was during the Etruscan period.

While the end result is really quite interesting, digging and sifting shovel test pits is awful! All day in the beating sun digging and pushing mud and clumps of sand through a screen. This has been the least fun job, but at least my muscles are getting strong; maybe soon I will have the arms of a soil scientist, haha!

Tomorrow, the entire group is going to Florence, and then 10 of us are heading on to Siena to see the start of Il Palio! I am so looking forward to it!

We went down the mountain, hiking through brambles, and took coring samples on a grid of 25 meters by 20 meters. The coring samples will be used to map the mountain to give the archaeologists an idea of where there are other areas of habitation.

Coring is done by taking a gauge that is a meter long and 2cm in diameter and hammering it into the ground and then pulling it out to see the layers of stratigraphy; through the soil we are able to see if there are "habitation layers" or archaeological inclusions, which would mean that there had been civilization there. Then, if we find inclusions or see a habitation layer (which is shown through the color and packed-ness of the soil as well as gravel percentage) we move on to use the large auger. We twist it into the ground and pull it out and analyze the soil every 10 cm down.

My job for the day was using the gauge. I had to drive it into the ground with a mallet and then pull it out and analyze the soil. This job requires a lot of muscle, and Thijs told me that to pull the gauge out I "must be strong like Eastern German woman legs." Another time when I said that I liked being a soil scientist, he asked "Are those the arms you have or the arms you are going to have? They must be beeeggga! (bigger)"

After yanking out the gauge, we looked at the soil and took notes on the textures of each layer as well as where the inclusions were; we also used a Munsell chart to describe the color of the soil at every 10 cm of depth. Kyle then had to use the auger to pull up larger amounts of dirt so that we could further analyze it.

Although the job was hard and literally every plant on that side of the mountain is equipped with some sort of awful thorns (see leg scrapes in photo), today was the most fun I had working yet. Thijs was really funny and Kyle and I learned a lot.

Core sampling is kind of like instant gratification archaeology; you get to see immediately what is down there without having to take off each dirt layer individually. Also, we found what we believe to be three different houses as well as terracing and a midden pile, so it was exciting to know there was probably a town underneath us.

The results of the tests that we did will be put into the GIS map that gives a big picture of the mountain and has even shown us that the sanctuary on top of Poggia Colla had sight lines to other temples in the area. These maps are used to give us a better idea of the culture of the Etruscans in this area. We had a really interesting lecture about this and other survey techniques tonight from Robert Vander Poppen and Ivo Van der Graaff.

We got to spend time in town today, to shop and hang out. The town of Vicchio is so so so small. We wandered around, bought some food and snacks at the Coop, and had gelato. Then home for pizza dinner with just the students.

The way that excavation works is that you peel back individual layers of soil one at a time through the whole trench before moving on to what is below it. It was a lot of slow scraping with the trowel and a lot of asking "Is this a rock ... or is it a something?" It was nice not to be moving huge amounts of dirt at a time and to get down to the real excavating!

We also got to look through Liz's field notebook and see what kinds of thing we will be taking notes about in our own field notebooks. And then tonight Dr. Robert Vander Poppen gave a lecture on how to set up our field notebooks and what type of notes to take in the field.

Freya has opened another very small trench and is excavating about one and a half meters down. Today she uncovered quite a bit of pottery as well as a spindle whorl! The spindle whorl was used to spin thread from wool. This one is unique because it was decorated with carvings.

It was very exciting to hold this bit of history in my hand! This is the first artifact that I have gotten to see come out of the trenches ... hopefully more to come!

Maybe tomorrow I won't have to be a shoveling workhorse ... we shall see!

I spent the first few hours sweeping dirt and clipping roots in PC33 so that they can take the initial pictures. The pictures will help with contextual issues so that they will know where the disturbances are, such as tree trunks that might have disturbed the context of the features below. They also give exact visual representation of what the trench looked like in every stage much better than a drawing.

After that, we started to remove the backfill dirt from the previously opened trench, which meant a lot of pick axing and shoveling. I can now officially be a landscaper with my mad shoveling skills!

Lasagna for dinner ... delicious!! Manual labor is exhausting though!

There are four trenches that will be opened this season, including PC32, which was open last year as well. In PC32, they have found a wall as well as what seems to be votive deposits of loom-weights and an upside-down column base that is thought to be part of the ritual destruction of the temple that once stood on the hilltop. This year they will be excavating further to determine the context of the ritual deposits that were found last year and to see if there are more deposits.

Trench PC33 is a new trench this year and it is thought that there may be a continuation of the walls in that trench. The trench supervisor for PC33 is Catherine. PC34, Liz's trench, is on the north side of the site. On the west side of the site, is Aksel's trench, PC35, which was under a tile pile that had added up for 14 years.

We spent the first day up on the site moving tile off of trench PC35. Since there was once a building on Poggia Colla, there is an abundance of tile that has been found in excavation. Only the corner tiles and other interesting ones are taken to the lab to be studied - the rest can't tell us anything new so they are just stacked up.

After work, we had shower time and had a lecture introducing us to Tuscany and the Etruscan culture. We had pizza from a local place that was so yummy while we sat outside and watched the sun set over the vineyard, so beautiful. I absolutely love it here!!