Nice title, right?
Anyway, Friday was the first field trip with the students, and it was great. Caroline and Eli met us there, and I took the bus with the kids and other faculty who came along. As it turns out none of the field trips are mandatory for the American faculty, but we (including Caroline and Eli!) are welcome to come along if there is room on the bus. The school will even cover our admission on most of the trips. The educational content is provided by the ancient history and ancient art history teachers. I am allowed to add content if I feel so moved. In short, Caroline, Eli and I get to go to these great places and listen to lectures and tour guides who explain to us what we are seeing, and we we don't have to pay a cent. Pretty sweet deal. This time we went to Cerveteri where there is an ancient Etruscan necropolis (lit. city of the dead) that has burial monuments dating from the 9th to the 2nd century b.c.e. It was awesome. Once you enter, the site is spread out along a hillside, and you can basically wander anywhere you want. There are no fences or barriers; just walk into a tomb, take a look, and move on to the next one.
A brief history lesson from a poorly informed and likely entirely inaccurate source:
Basically there were four types of funerary monuments at this site. The Iron Age/Villanovan (i.e. 9th and 8th centuries b.c.e) types which at first were simply large stone urns for ashes and then were trench tombs (i.e. graves like we know them). This change in funerary practices from cremation to burial leads some people to believe that the Etruscans migrated somewhere else, probably Lydia. Others believe that the Etruscans were autochthonous and that this change simply represents the adaptation of new cultural practices discovered through trade with other cultures, namely the Phoenicians and the Greeks. The next type of tomb was called a tumulus (pl. tumuli) which was an artificial mound created by piling up tufa (a volcanic stone found in abundance in this part of Italy) on top of a chamber tomb, most of which seem to have consisted of 3 or 4 rooms. They sort of look like big huts with an entrance cut out facing the northwest. Some of these were really extraordinary with detailed molding on the outside and detailed stone work on the inside.
These tumuli represent the period in Etruscan history where established trade ties led to more wealth and a stratified class system. The wealthiest families built these tumuli for themselves and their descendants. The site in Cerveteri lies in between the ancient town and the port. We walked on the same ancient roads that the Etruscans would have used daily to bring goods to and from the sea. In fact, we saw the grooves the wagons had worn in the stone pavings. All by way of saying that this burial complex was integrated into the daily life of this town. These tumuli would have commanded respect on a daily basis. Relatives would come by and make offerings, and the rest of the people would have visual proof of the importance of certain families. These tombs would have been painted brightly and filled with treasures. The paint is gone because they used no adhesive to bond the paint to the stone, and the treasures were either stolen by grave robbers or are sitting somewhere in the Vatican Museums.
The next phase in the burial customs of the Etruscans were the tombs built into the walls of the hills and often punctuated by squared tufa brick facades. These were aligned in streets, and the theory is that as urban planning developed, the burial customs literally created a "city of the dead" modeled after their own city. In this part of the site you can see entrances to tombs lined up along roads like shops on a busy street.
Above are some pictures for you to look at. One is Eli at the entrance to a tumulus. Another is me in front of a few tumuli. Then Caroline in front of some tumuli. Then a tumulus. The last one is a picture of the later kind of tomb that was modeled after the contemporary urban planning. These are just the tip of the iceberg at this site. It was truly amazing, and I can't wait to learn more about the Etruscans.
And now...just a quick report on my bike ride yesterday (Saturday). We met at the piazzetta again, but this time the group left without us because we were waiting for Pat. Renato, a very nice man and friend of Pat and Rolf (another American teacher), waited with us, and when Pat arrived he said that the day's ride was to Amelia, in Umbria. I was ready for the challenge and off we went. We got to Orte, the furthest point in last week's ride, and rode on, crossing the Tiber and up the hills on the far side of the Tiber Valley. I have to admit I still get a chill when I see the Tiber. In Orte it is really nothing much to look at, but I am in awe of the history that river has seen and the peoples and cultures it has helped feed. Anyway, on the long and steady climb to Amelia we crossed into Umbria with it's wooded hills dotted with olive groves and vineyards. A lot of people were harvesting their grapes, and this meant that around several turns we were greeted with the smell of the crush as the farmers got started producing their next vintages of wine. I have smelled this before up in Napa, but this was certainly a special experience. We were on a tiny road within feet of the farmers cutting the grapes off of the vines. The views were spectacular, and the ride was pleasant. That is until we leveled off, and I thought we were just moments from Amelia. We actually had one more climb to get to Amelia, and that one hurt really badly...and not in a good way.
In Amelia we stopped for a caffe macchiato and some caloric intake, and while we were at the bar we saw the other riders from the group who had taken the other route from Orte to Amelia. We hopped back in the saddle and headed out on that other route back which despite the rules of geography is also uphill. "How can that be?" I thought as my legs began to feel deadened, and I began to worry because we were only half way. We had 50 kilometers left to ride, including the hill coming out of Orte that destroyed me last week. To make a long story short. It hurt, something awful, but I made it. This was the hardest ride I have ever done, and I am glad that it is now a gilded memory. Caroline, Eli and I celebrated this triumph with gelato followed by pizza at a great place out in the country with the American faculty, Dave, Roberta, and Daniel (pictures coming soon), and now I can start to worry about next week's ride.
Hope you all are well. All prossima.
