Explore the newest excavation on the Via Appia!

I've got an incredible opportunity to show you. Here is an ongoing excavation. They've had three campaigns already, and this is the University of Ferrara, and they've given me this access to bring you to learn about their work and also for you to learn more about what archaeology is about in the first place. And this is a great project that is allowing people to come from the public to participate as they have their campaign. So it's a great initiative, and it's a great opportunity to see what archaeology is about. Archaeology is about uncovering the past. It's about documenting the materials that you find. It's about proper documentation, of course, and it's about learning the skills of excavation, extracting the material, documenting it, preserving it, storing it. You've got here on hand excavators, archaeologists. You've got anthropologists because we have tombs, and you have architects. So there's a great ensemble of experts that are teaching students from Italy and also from all over the world. So it's an opportunity now to get familiar with this excavation, which they call Via Appia 39 because we're along the ancient Via Appia, and the numero civico, or the street number, is 39 surrounded by history. Let me take you down now and show you a couple of things that I've learned on this ongoing excavation. So we'll descend to the ancient levels, and it's always a treat to go to a dig site. Let's step over here carefully. All right, so here we've got the beautiful sunlight. We're surrounded. What a fortunate dig site they have because they actually have shade, which is a phenomenal thing to have when you're excavating under the hot summer sun. Of course, now we're here in the afternoon, and today's a special day. Today's a special day because it's the last day of their season, and that's a day when everyone's really busy. It's a day in which you're going to cover up the site and do your last documentation, and then you have to wait for the next season. So obviously, you're going to wrap up and cover your site that you're excavating because you're interrupting it because when we get into later in the fall, we get rain, we get inclement weather, and that's not really a great time to have an excavation. So what do we have here? The principal thing that they have gone down to ancient levels are tombs, and they date to the 2nd century. And you can see here, documentation work is taking place right now. But what you have is a series of niches for urns on the upper deck, and the lower part, you actually have an arch here, and there's been inserted under this archisoleum. You have a sarcophagus, and the sarcophagus has the remains of the deceased. So we have here a rather, I'd say, complete tomb, and we're just off the Via Appia. So what's so exciting about this is you have a project, you have beautiful documentation, and you have new insights into what was happening along the Via Appia as you came into Rome. And we know, of course, it was lined with tombs, but as the director of the project has underlined, it's somewhere in this vicinity on the Via Appia that there was going to be that sanctuary, that republican sanctuary of Mars. So this was one of the most important sanctuaries for the Romans, considering the fact that they spent so much time declaring war and fighting wars and winning wars, ultimately all over the Mediterranean. But it seems, as a working hypothesis says the director, the area of the sanctuary could have eventually been encroached upon by parceling out land that could then be turned into plots for burials. So we're looking at rather modest tombs here, and there's one here, and there's another one over here. And we come over on this side here, there are other tombs still to be excavated. So this is a very large project, and this is a project in which you have the excavations of the tombs at various phases. And that makes you, the public, looking at the site today, well, it becomes a little more confusing because it's not a fully excavated site. This is a work in progress. And what's fascinating as well is that you have this, you know, great team of experts and professionals, and alongside them, you have students. So you have a didactic excavation, which is a really fabulous way of doing excavation. I've done many myself in that way, and it is an extraordinary moment for young students of archaeology. And at the same time, as was noted, this is a site where the public is actually invited into the site, an active excavation site. And so they're getting a chance to learn, and they're getting a chance even to participate during the course of the excavation. So you have great social media coverage about Via Appia 39 by the people that are doing the excavation. So you can learn a lot about what's going on during the course of the excavation. You can also learn, you know, on their website, you can learn about the results of a particular campaign. So it's a very involved way of disseminating the information of an ongoing excavation. I think that's really fabulous that when you really are engaging the public, the local community, considering the fact that, you know, we're along the Via Appia, and there's been a lot of building over a lot of time. In more recent years, there was a lot of abusive constructions, and a lot of those constructions from the 50s and the 60s, the 80s, you know, they're getting removed. And as a result, it's parcels of land like this that now are owned by the city of Rome that allow scholars that are doing their research to then petition and ultimately have an archaeological project. So what's so fascinating also, I didn't know this at all. This is another fascinating fact. This is pretty much the only excavated area, stratigraphic excavation, document excavation in this vicinity so close to Rome along the Via Appia. So you're getting precious information about the life of ancient Rome in a sector of the city that you never had properly documented before because later on, right, there's so much urban development, so much of this area is just covered over with modern housing. So this is also then a triumphal project where you have the recuperation of history and you have the opportunity to explore. So over here, we can also take a look at two more things. You can see a little bit of another, I think it's another tomb. And you see some mosaic floor here. And right, you know, we're right here in the wild here, we're seeing a restorer and he's doing some restoration. He's taking a look at this portion of Fresco. So that's what a lot of archaeology is too. It's not just discovering and documenting, it's also preserving. And it's really great to see the on-site restoration taking place. And that's what's, you know, I think is as important today as excavation. It's the preservation and the care of this heritage. We'll see one more thing over here. And you hear this from the excavators as well. You have this massive wall right here. That's delineating something. So here you can see this huge wall they discovered. And whereas we have, you know, Antonine brick, we have these nice tombs, they're butting up against something that's pre-existing, which is this wall. What does this wall belong to? So this is the sort of investigation that's going on here on the part of the archaeologists is trying to figure out what's happening over there. What's the relationship from one structure to another? And this wall right here could be a Temenos wall or the large so-called Mausoleum of Gaeta, which is a really big tomb literally next door. What's the relationship going on here? Is this a division wall delineating that large mausoleum? Or is it something else? Is it something older? Is it something that's related to that sanctuary that belongs to the Republican Temple of Mars? So you've got great questions. You've got new information. You've got new artifacts. And of course, we have lots of tombs. And as they've descended, they have a lot of later tombs that they discovered from, say, the 6th and 7th centuries AD. But the core of what's here inside, these structures that we've been looking at, where there's inhumation and there's also urns for cremation, those two tombs right there are dated to the Antonine period, to the 2nd century AD. There's a lot to take in. You can learn more. You can go to the website. You can go to the social media of Via Appia 39 and learn more. And if you're here, when they're having one of their active excavation campaigns, you can go online and reserve and you can visit. You can be in the trenches. So it's an incredible opportunity. This is the sort of thing that I love about archaeology. And I love seeing projects like this that are very engaging, that are very public, and are really excited about getting people interested and learning more about archaeology. I just want to thank again Professor Rachele Dubini of the University of Ferrara and Fabio Torchetta, the director of the excavation. If you want to learn more about the excavation, you can check out a separate video on Ancient Rome Live.