Archaeology in Lazio: The Gabii Project, 2022 and 2023
This June, some ten intrepid travelers, led by a seasoned archeologist, will venture across the pond to Italy. They will return as budding archeologists sporting, as Catherine Zehner ’24 told me, “the worst tan lines ever.” Zehner was one of eight Exeter students who visited Lazio, Italy, in 2022, on the annual summer trip to central Italy to work at the University of Michigan’s Gabii Project. Eighteen kilometers east of Rome, the dig is located at the site of the ancient Roman city of Gabii. “There’s just so much detail to [archaeology]; the impact that we leave on the dirt hundreds of years later is really interesting,” Zehner continued.
Chloe Zhu ’23 who visited Lazio with the group two years ago, told me her favorite part was the community— “You’d be digging and the person who specializes in this type of stuff, I don’t know, lithics—it’s a type of stone carving…they’d be like, ‘Oh, I wrote my thesis on this.’” Laura Saldarriaga ’25 who participated in the program last year, “loved hearing about the topology. Our resident expert, Eddie,” — who she said was her favorite site member “because he was Scottish”— “had so much background… graphing the topo[graphy] in Scotland…I also really enjoyed seeing the topo[graphy] stations, and like, it was so scientific and math.” Well put. On the power of the topography and other specialty rotations, Saldarriaga reflected, “It was actually a lot of fun, [topo] and also cleaning things at finds…Sometimes when you were digging between all the rocks and wattle and daub—” a method used in the construction of the Stone-Age huts we excavated in Area C which employs wooden or reed strips (wattle), packed with mud and dung (daub), and fired to create walls— “you lost track of what you were doing, but when you were…washing pottery and you saw the little symbols, you [thought], ‘This is what it’s all for.’”[1]
Rajiv Raval ’24, who survived the entirety of last year’s program with Saldarriaga as his rotation partner, noted the earth itself. “One of the cool concepts that I learned on site was stratigraphy. Stratigraphy is…differentiating by layers.” In Area C, where Raval also worked, analyzing the layers of dirt we excavated and cataloguing the changes was essential. He also highlighted the manufactured material we excavated: “I learned how to differentiate pottery based on…different handles and lips.” Zehner also enjoyed “looking specifically for certain minerals to track trade at the time— you’re finding little shards of pottery…it’s about delving into that and tracking its patterns.”
Speaking about the excavation process itself, Sophia Zhang ’23 confessed that she “literally threw up on the second day— Andrew and I got heat stroke [exhaustion] and we had to stay home because we were, like, throwing up…I think the best part of it for me was…the fact that you did a lot of physical labor…I got, like, stronger.” Saldarriaga concurred, observing that “it was really hot…I deserve monetary compensation.”
Legendary Exeter history teacher and real life archeologist Dr. Jeff Samuels leads the trip every year. “He’s been a great teacher for me,” Zehner related. “It was really interesting to see him in the field that he’s spent so much time with. He really is an expert in Roman archaeology…He has like a decade’s worth of experience excavating, and that’s not an expertise that comes across in a classroom environment.” Zhu agreed. “Exploring Rome—we’d have days where we would…explore Hadrian’s villa, and we were there with Dr. Samuels and Ms. Ion [trip facilitator], who are very well versed in history, so we learned a lot— it was basically like a guided tour from them.” Raval told me that “Doc Sam is the essence of a teacher, he knows everything, he—” before breaking off, laughing. Composure regained, he continued, “He’s such a good role model, he put up with all our ********…when we did some questionable things relating to different varieties of water, he wasn’t even that mad.” When asked about his favorite site staff member, Raval instantly answered, with a smile, “Sheira…Sheira was great, she and Doc Sam [the masterminds behind the work done in Area C] were very good supervisors, they were always open to answering questions, even when they were stupid questions…they were really great teachers.”
Area C, which Samuels has been working on for most of our lives, was finally closed last summer. It “was amazing to finally reach completion of something I’ve bene working on since I was a much smaller lad,” Samuels reflected. “I just…” he continued in an unusually sincere reverie, “think it’s a really wonderful program, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to work with students…getting to do Harkness on the road…[and making] memories that will be enshrined in my brain for many many moons.” An understatement. “Grocery shopping, which is one of my great joys in life,” is one of Samuels’ best memories of the two years he has run the program. “We had some great…adventures together that I really enjoyed…trying to find things in the grocery store…we got to experience that part of Italian culture, and it was delightful,” he told me. “Also getting lost,” he added towards the end of our conversation— “we got lost in the car a few times, and that was kind of fun…I really like driving in Italy…it was really cool, pretty countryside.”
Saldarriaga claimed that, officially, her favorite part was “actually getting to take part in this excavation” and, perhaps more truthfully, “eating cookies in the water hut…the fiber cookies, specifically the banana ones…There were chocolate ones, the ones with little berries, and then the banana ones, those were so good.” She recalled fondly wandering around Albano Laziale with Ava Helbig ’25, another lovely member of the 2023 party. “Ava and I found this tiny little cafe, it was quite early, we were the only ones there…we got this wonderful lasagna— it was my favorite food on the trip— and we got cappuccinos even though it was, like, legally too late for us to get cappuccinos….the lady shot us really dark looks. We were sitting in this plaza with a fountain and you could see…ruins of a theater next to us, and it was only us eating and drinking.” “ I thought,” Samuels agreed, “the town, the vibes, the villa…were the best parts of small town Italy.”
Museum visits constituted a large part of the trip itinerary. “My favorite place we visited,” Zhang told me, “was technically not Rome…this [town] called Frascati…there was a really sick bookstore there…second hand bookstore… I really liked our museum visits…but they get a little old after a while, so, you know, learning, fine.” Frascati, she said, “feels like you’re getting more into Italy itself.”
Keon Osei ’25, who went to Italy with the group last summer and used the word “amazing” at least eight times in his interview, encouraged “everyone…to do the Italy archaeology trip this year because it’s amazing [case in point], and it’s going to be the most fun of your life, even if certain people were there, like Liz…” he trailed off, examining the interviewer critically. “But,” he continued, “it’s going to be amazing…you get to get closer with people, like Liz, and…other people too…Doc Sams, you get to see him with his ponytail down, and that’s, like, very interesting,” he said, significantly. On a more serious note, he added, “Once you get to know more about him, you just…love him more as a teacher and as a person. Everyone should have a Dr. Samuels in their life.”
When asked what advice she would give to this year’s students, Zhang responded, “Just go in with an open mind. I think its going to be more tedious than you think its going to be, but for me that was one of the lessons, to kind of learn how much work it really takes to do archaeology…Expect it to be a lot, expect it to be backbreaking— no, no, well…not that bad.”
Notes
[1] Personal Communication with Laura Saldarriaga. Saldarriaga has requested credit for the translation of all of her quote for translating her thoughts from Spanish to English.