Rome continued....

I think this is the furthest behind I’ve ever been. I think I can mainly blame it on being so exhausted after digging every day. I’ll try to make the post as brief as possible…………

The last post left off just before we were going to visit the Imperial Fora and Museums, so I shall pick up from there.

On Tuesday (24th) we had our site visit of the Imperial Fora and Museums. The Imperial Fora are forums that were attached to the main forum of Rome. These forums were built by certain emperors. The forums are: The Forum and Markets of Trajan, the Forum of Augustus, the Forum of Caesar, the Forum of Domitian/Nerva, and the Forum of Peace (Vespasian). There is a new museum constructed partly within the Forum and Markets of Trajan where we started our visit. The museum has been well layed out and is very modern. It was surprisingly empty of tourists, which is always a nice thing.

On Wednesday (25th) we had a meeting in the main office where we received information on the site, the method of excavation and received our site information packs. It was rather exciting hearing about the site and learning that we would be visiting the site on Friday morning before we started the dig on Monday.

On Thursday (26th) we had a visit of Ostia. We met Albert at Pyramide train station – although our group was rather late because some nameless people slept in. Ostia was a harbour town at the mouth of the Tiber, 30 miles from Rome. Ostia is an interesting site. It’s rather similar to Pompeii in a lot of ways. Much of the town in still remaining, with mosaics still in place, but is less well known, so there are very few tourists around.

After the tour, some of us hung around Ostia for a while longer. Neal was really interested to see one particular building that had housed a cult of Mithras and a large statue had been uncovered. We set off to find it. Neal was in the lead with the map, but he quickly led us to the wrong place, so I took over and we managed to find it. Unfortunately it wasn’t entirely open, there was some orange tape type stuff blocking the entrance, but it was easily ducked under and we kinda snuck in to see the Mithraeum. Cults of Mithras were always located underground, to attempt to copy a cave atmosphere. We had to head below ground and it was very damp and creepy. We felt adventurous afterwards!

After leaving Ostia we headed back to the apartment and spent most of the night cramming for our test the next day. I can’t remember if I mentioned it before, but after the 2 weeks of site visits, Darius would set a test for us to test how much we had learnt over the past 2 weeks. We were all pretty stressed about the prospect of a test, so we’d been studying for the past couple of nights.

The test wasn’t scheduled until 4:30pm on Friday (27th) and in the morning we had a site visit of the excavation. We met Albert at 9am at Lucio Sestion train station and then he escorted us to the site. We met Dora - the project coordinator, Jeff - one of the trench supervisors, Chris - another trench supervisor and also Neal and Steve’s professor at Carthage College. At our site visit we were divided into 2 groups – trench A and B. Trench A consisted of Indira, Pascal, Steve, Sam, Andreas, Jay, Jess, Mike (Brickhouse), Big Mike and myself. Trench B consisted of Katie, Kristin, Ashleigh, Julia, David, Ted, Neal, Pete and Alex. In trench A we would be excavating new areas of the site attached to the southern end of the bath complex. In particular we would be exploring the newly uncovered Caldarium, a praefernium, and excavating yet unknown areas of the site. It all sounded very exciting and we couldn’t wait to start on Monday.

After the site visit we headed back to our apartment and continued to do some final cramming for the test that afternoon.

Finally it was time to head to the office for the test. We had 2 hours for the test and I used every minute of that time. I was surprised that the test was harder than I’d thought it would be, but I managed to answer every question and was relatively happy with how I went. It would have been a hard test to set because we’d learnt so much in such a short period of time and everyone had different backgrounds. Some people have never studied ancient history before, some have done some ancient history/archaeology units, and some have completed/nearly completed a degree in classics.

After the test was over Indira and I stopped to get a crepe on the way back to the apartment in celebration. A crepe is like a very large, thin pancake that is cooked to order and is spread thickly with Nutella (a chocolate spread) then folded up so you can eat it while walking. They are absolutely delicious and I think a mighty good way to celebrate.

A lot of people went out that night to celebrate having done the test by drinking large quantities of alcohol. I wasn’t in the mood, so I didn’t tag along, and I’m glad I didn’t because most people didn’t get back until about 5am and then they missed going to the catacombs.

On Saturday (28th) morning, those of us who hadn’t been drinking, decided to head out of Rome to the catacombs. There are catacombs all around Rome, extending for miles underground. The catacombs are Christian cemeteries that were constructed underground once they started running out of room to bury people. They are very interesting and creepy places, so we wanted to see them. Pascal, Steve, Neal, Big Mike and I headed out in the morning to visit one of them. We caught the train out to the closest station and then had to figure out how to get to the catacombs from there. We knew that the majority of the catacombs were located about 2 miles from the train station, but we couldn’t figure out which bus to catch to them. As none of us felt like walking, we decided in the end just to catch a taxi. It turned out to be the best idea, because it was quite cheap when split between 5 people.

We picked the Callisto catacombs as my guidebook said they were the largest and some of the best to visit. The taxi dropped us off at the entrance to the complex (which was 1000m from the catacombs entrance – there were distance signs every couple of hundred metres letting us know that we were getting closer!) After a rather long walk under the hot sun, but along a lovely tree shaded road, we reached the catacombs. We bought tickets but then had to wait for quite a while. They only let so many people go into the catacombs at a time and you can’t wander into them on your own, you have to go as part of a guided group, as the catacombs are mazes and you would get lost. Finally we were allowed to go into the catacombs. Our guide was the English language guide, although I must say that her English wasn’t particularly good or easy to understand at times. The catacombs themselves were refreshingly chilly inside, which was a lovely change from all of the hot weather we had been exposed to since arriving in Rome. The tour didn’t last very long, only about 40 mins, but it was very interesting. No bodies remain in the catacombs any longer, but all of the openings were bodies would have been are still there, which is rather creepy. It turned out to be a really interesting tour and I’m glad we went to visit the catacombs.

When we left the catacombs we had the long trek back to the main gate. This time we weren’t able to find a taxi, but we managed to figure out that there was a bus that we could catch that would take us back to Circus Maximus and from there we could catch a train back to Barberini station right near our apartment.

Most people had only just woken up when we got back from the catacombs, although it was mid afternoon. Some people decided to head out drinking again that evening (to Campo de Fiori of course), so as you can imagine not much happened on Sunday (29th). Some people managed to drag themselves out of bed and head to the catacombs.

Sunday night was an early one because we had a very early start the next day for our first day of digging.

We have to be at the site at 7:30am every morning. It is about a 40 min journey from our apartment to the site in total, so we have to leave by quarter to 7:00am if we want to get there on time. Because of this early start we have to be up at 6am to get ready – much too early in my opinion, but as they say ‘needs must’.

For now I am going to leave it there as it is already late and I have an early start in the morning. I will attempt to get the rest posted over the next couple of days. I know we aren’t completely caught up, but at least it is a start.

Update time

I was planning on a long update post tonight to pick up from where I left off. However, we have to be up at 6am tomorrow morning (even though it's a Saturday!). We are heading down to Naples for the weekend to visit Pompeii and Herculaneum. Our train leaves Termini station at 7am, so it is yet another early start. Because of that I am heading straight to bed now and will attempt to post an update on Sunday night.

Ciao for now.

Casey.