Ferento

The weekly schedule here has students in class for full days Monday through Thursday. On Friday, all Italian classes meet as well as AP classes (I teach AP Calculus, therefore have one Friday class) and then students are done at 12:30PM on Friday. About half the time, the Friday afternoons include a field trip to some site, historical or art related. As a teacher, I am encouraged to go and since I'm taking Art History with the students, the trips have great context and meaning to me. The students and I went on our first "gita" this week.

We took a local bus out to the town of (well, former town) of Ferento. There is an archeological site that is being excavated. The history of Ferento is that it, a town of Nepi and Viterbo were for many centuries enemies. They sacked each other, burned each others cities and generally didn't practice their good relationship skills. In the end, Ferento was abandoned and in the early 1900's came interest in the former city.

Your typical Central Italian countryside.

Yvonne M. (SYA Art History teacher) on left and one of the staff archeologists at the site on the right.

Students listening to the history of Ferento.

The theater of Ferento. It dates from about the 1st century AD and was a sign that Ferento had a thriving civic life. In addition, baths have been excavated which indicates that they had leisure time and were interested in hygiene.

Samples are bagged and the location of the found specimen numbered and mapped.

Found items and carefully cleaned and sorted by age and location of the find site.

Here, standing on the well used roadway (we know because of the chariot ruts in the rock) we're looking at the wall remnants of a roman home from the 1st century. Note how extensive and large it was. This home was where one entire family lived.

At the center of the domus was a fluvium (or illfluvium) which was to catch rainwater. It was sloped towards the hole which allowed water to collect in a cistern.

An archeologists toolbox

Drawings and sketches of the excavation site. They're still using compasses!

Here you see the medieval one room home that has been built over a part of the domus. The crumbled wall in the middle is primary material. It's lack of attractiveness is because the 1st century residents either had the walls plastered or had some sort of covering. The more geometric and ordered stones were reused stones.

This is the remains of a church from medieval times. Babies that didn't make it to childhood were found buried next to the church. It is hypothesized that the rainwater that dripped off the roof of the church continuously baptized their souls so they could live eternally in the afterlife.

A theme that replays itself over and over is the reuse of materials. Note here that former columns have been used to build the wall of a building.

This is through to be the grave a child from the 1st century.

The field of archeology in Italy is dominated by women. The site here in Ferento is a real life site for training for first year students at the local university. This guy (cute, eh?) is in the minority.