OCTOBER 2000
NEW SITE FOR FSU ARCHAEOLOGISTS
In the summer of 2000, Florida State's department of classics launched a new archaeological excavation in Italy, with a field school at the site of San Venanzo, located between the ancient Etruscan/Roman cities of Orvieto and Perugia.
The site had never before been excavated. The highly successful pilot season of four weeks there has indicated that San Venanzo was inhabited by both the Etruscans and Romans and that there are extensive remains to be explored.
The project is under the overall supervision of Nancy de Grummond, professor of classics, with the field work directed by Claudio Bizzarri. The collaboration with Bizzarri, a native of Orvieto, was established while he was a visiting professor at the University of South Carolina, Aiken, in the spring.
The crew consisted of college students from FSUand USC-Aiken, as well as from the University of North Carolina, Bryn Mawr College and the University of Michigan, along with one high school student from Maclay School in Tallahassee.
Kathy Guidi, an M.A. student in classics, supervised a unit in which the crew unearthed a large, cylindrical Etruscan-style water tank or cistern, thought to date to the 5th century B.C.
Wayne Rupp, a student in the classics Ph.D.program, was the unit supervisor for a trench in which were uncovered walls and pottery dating to the period of the early Roman Empire (1st century of this era).
A number of coins were excavated during the season, some of which were clearly identifiable as belonging to the later centuries of the Roman Empire (3rd-4th centuries of this era).
It is thus evident that the site shows a fairly long period of occupation.
The classics department has sponsored Etruscan/Roman excavations at Cetamura del Chianti, near Florence, for more than 25 years.
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An Etruscan cistern