My oldest daughter, now 19, once dreamt of becoming an archeologist. When she was 13 she heard that the bones of King Richard III, after having been buried for over 500 years, had been found under a parking lot in Leicester, England. A local professor was quoted in the news report. My daughter immediately did internet research on how to major in archeology at college in Britain. Over time her interests shifted and she ended up at a university in Canada, but she still has a soft spot for digging up stuff from the past. After our family moved to Rome this past year, my wife was looking for Christmas presents in the “Experiences” section of Airbnb and found an opportunity that we couldn’t pass up, the chance to be an archeologist for a day.
Claudio, a professional archeologist from Gruppo Archeologico Romano (GAR), met our family at a metro station on the way out of Rome. On the short drive to Castel di Guido, a tiny village just off the Aurelian Way, Claudio explained to us that the villa rustica we were heading toward dated back about 2100 years, to just after the Romans had pacified the Etruscan countryside and wealthy Romans started building their hilltop country villas. The proximity to the Aurelian Way, originally built to move troops toward conquered lands, provided easy commuting to/from the city and market access for the villa’s agricultural products. The site had initially been excavated after its rediscovery in the 1970s, as a form of “rescue” archeology to protect against the scavengers of the day. The villa was revealed to overlook the distant sea while providing the full Roman bathing experience (look up caldarium, tepidarium, and frigidarium), as well as production of either wine or olive oil. The mosaic floor tiles from one of the rooms can be seen in the National Museum across from the Termini train station in Rome. GAR has recently rekindled interest in exploring the site and have found additional rooms that had currently unknown uses. That is the focus of the present-day excavations.
After Claudio’s history lesson and tour of the site he introduces us to our tools for the day – each one of us gets a small metal trowel, hand broom and dustpan, a sturdy bucket, and work gloves. He points to a tiered dirt area adjacent to a fully excavated mosaic tile floor as our work space, and explains the proper archeologist technique. Loosen the centuries-hardened dirt by lightly scraping with the trowel, brush the loosened dirt into the dustpan, and empty the dustpan into the bucket. Repeat. When resistance is discovered, which is frequent, gently remove dirt from around the object. Most of the objects are easily identifiable by the layman as run-of-the-mill rocks. But not infrequently the objects have obvious man-made markings. Some of these are important enough for the GAR archeologists to set aside. We spread out a little bit and sit in the dirt and commence scraping. It isn’t long before I find a small square rock that Claudio identifies as a mosaic tessera that was likely a tiniest piece of a floor. He says that I should picture a period house, caved in upon itself through time and probably debris from other parts of the house dumped on top in later years.
Everyone finds something. There are lots of pieces of light-colored cement and clay amphora pot shards. There are square-cut rocks the size of baseballs that were used with the cement as structure for the villa walls. There are more tesserae. There are small pieces of colored frescos that made the outer exposed part of the walls – yellow, blue, red. A couple have stripes. There is a piece of textured ceiling molding. There are a couple of metal nails. There are heavier but small pieces of marble, which were imported from all corners of the Roman Empire. It is far from boring. Claudio is always there excitedly explaining to us what we are finding, and emptying the buckets as they accumulate surplus rocks and dirt. His enthusiasm is infectious. All of these items are over 2000 years old!
After several hours in the dirt I stand to get the circulation back into my legs and discover that I’m cold. It’s January and the wind is blowing, and the five layers of clothing that I’m wearing are no longer effective. The feeling must be contagious because all of us start doing the warm-up dance. Thankfully, another member of GAR appears to say lunch is ready and it includes hot minestrone soup, as well as meat, cheese, bread, and wine. It helps, but we’re not long for the trenches after lunch. Claudio tells us that it’s so hot at this site in the summer that they suspend all excavation work in July and August. This might be the only day of the year where they stop work because we are freezing.
On the ride back into the city Claudio tells us how we can take volunteer archeology courses through GAR if we’d like to continue excavating at the Castel di Guido site. All of us are interested. We’ve never done anything like this before. He says that constructing the story of the villa rustica is less complicated than excavations in Rome, where buildings have been constructed on buildings on top buildings for millennia. Ironic that the 2000-year-old country home continues to be a rural retreat for modern-day archeologist, even if just for a day.