NOVEMBER2000
40,000 YEARS OF HISTORY TO DISCOVER IN CETAMURA, ITALY
It's midsummer in Central Italy, and
a Florida State University student is squatting in the dirt,
carefully, slowly chipping with a trowel to reveal whatever is
there - just soil, or a tool, a jewel, a kiln or a wall from
40,000, 2,500 or just 1,000 years ago.
For the last 25 years, the finds at the site, Cetamura, have
been exciting enough to interest the Italian government in a
public exhibition at the nearby town of Gaiole-in-Chianti.
The exhibition opened July 19 with dancers, choreographed for the occasion by an FSU dance professor, a catalogue designed by the FSU Museum of Fine Arts and a party shared by FSU archaeologists and students from the FSU Study Center in Florence - and Italian colleagues.
The project, on a wooded hill in Chianti, in Tuscany north of Rome, has yielded evidence of lives of hunters in the Paleolithic time. About 40,000 years ago, they left worked flint, including finished tools, for Florida State students and professors to find as evidence of their daily lives.
About 37,000 years later, or 2,700 years ago, Etruscans occupied the hill in a village now known as Cetamura. A few centuries later - in the fourth and third centuries B.C. - it was Etruscans again, making tiles and bricks, weaving and leading their daily lives - now studied by FSU Classics Professor Nancy de Grummond, her colleagues and her students.
When the Romans conquered the region in the first century B.C., the artifacts changed. The Romans built larger buildings and left tile baths, probably not grand enough for emperors but adequate for travelers. Cetamura was at the intersection of a major north-south road and an important east-west road.
In the 11th and 12th centuries, Cetamura was occupied once more. There was a fortified village, and diggers found an "abundance of bones (cow, pig, boar, sheep, goat and bird)" to tell archaeologists that the people had eaten well. A few fragments of spindles give evidence that women were among the occupants of the fort, busy with their traditional tasks of spinning and weaving.
And then, no more. De Grummond and her students have found no evidence of occupation of Cetamura since the medieval years. It might have been the wars, and it might have been the earthquake of 1558, de Grummond said, but the walls came down and the village was reborn only as an archaeological site in 1973.
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Black Gloss Etruscan Vessel from the 3rd
c. BC.
It has since become a field school, directed by de Grummond,
where FSU classics, art history and anthropology students are
studying the daily life of ancient hunters, artisans, weavers,
water carriers, cooks and clerks who scratched their accounts
on pottery.
"The Etruscans are important because they ruled Italy before
the Romans," de Grummond said. "At Cetamura, we have
material from the final centuries of their history (300-50 B.C.)."
Of particular interest, she said, is the artisans' area, where
there is evidence of Etruscan weaving, metalworking and the making
of ceramics. At the site, the archaeologists have uncovered a
kiln used for making brick and tile.
"This is one of the few surviving Etruscan kilns and certainly
the oldest one known in the Chianti region, where ceramics are
still important today," she said.
More exciting, said de Grummond, "is that we have evidence
that they dedicated the kiln to the gods so that they might have
success with the labor-intensive, difficult process of making
brick and tile."
The exhibition includes two intentionally smashed dishes of
ritual type that were scattered throughout the furnace to implore
the gods' intercession.
"This is the only instance excavated and recorded by archaeologists
of the Etruscans blessing an artisans' kiln," she said.
Cetamura's historical significance stretches into the Roman era as well, she said.
"We have excavated the remains of some baths with a sophisticated
under-floor heating system, dating to the 1st and 2nd centuries
of this era," said de Grummond.
Included among the relics are Roman board and dice games used
to relax while at the baths and artifacts related to grooming
and dressing.
The exhibition features 171 objects excavated at the Cetamura
site and places them in context of traditional Etruscan work
and play. It is located in the tourist center of Gaiole-in-Chianti,
about five miles from Cetamura.
A catalog, "Cetamura Antica, Traditions of Chianti,"
may be purchased from the classics department, <http://www.
fsu. edu/~classics/> (Italian translation also available.)
De Grummond said the quality of the publication, designed by
Allys Palladino-Craig and Julienne Mason of the FSU Museum of
Fine Arts, was "exceptional." It was printed in Florida
and shipped to Italy for the opening.
"One of the greatest joys of the project," she said,
"was to have so much encouragement and support in the exhibition
from FSU colleagues, alumni and students."
Lynda Davis, director of the FSU Dance Repertory Theater, choreographed
the dance concert, called "Jubilation." It was performed
in the piazza at Giaole when the exhibition opened.
Alumni came from as far away as Kansas and Germany and joined the crowd of some 350 Italians and Americans.