Just finished another long meal, hosting the parents and sister of Elena, who has just joined us. Bar-B-Q sausages (which yours truly cooked on an open fire) from the local butcher, four kinds of Italian cheese (two local), two kinds of wine, two types of salad, pasta, bread, and a couple of desserts. Can't complain about the food!

We had a rather physical day outside clearing brush from in front of the largest part of the walls that Dario wants to study. Hack, clip, cut, haul, chop, prune... we moved a lot of brush, thorns, small trees, weeds, grass, vines, clinging vegetation, etc., and I have the scratches on my arms to prove it. But now we have revealed the biggest walls and we will proceed to clear away loose stone and try to figure out how the architecture works in terms of one wall being built against another, and what order they were built.

We cleared brush until about 2 pm when it got quite hot, although not nearly as humid as Rome. Then we retired to our lodgings and most people took a nap, although some kind of high-school group has rented a neighboring building and they've been quite loud both last night and this afternoon. After the nap I worked on my panos and others did different things.

We now have Dario and me, plus Swen (an American from California who has been studying abroad here this year and who's my roommate); Aurelia and Alessandra (both archaeologists from down south; the former is Dario's s.o.); and now Elena who's American and only 17 and considering going to school for archaeology. Tomorrow Monica is supposed to join us as well.

Everyone except me speaks Italian so sometimes I'm out of the conversation but at least we're all together and not running home when 5 pm sounds on the city chimes.


PS. Those who don't like spiders would not want to be out clearing brush with us!



The elementary school where we have our lab. The little chairs in it are so cute!




The guy who brought in the chainsaw took away some of the wood on his Vespa.




Next to the site is a droving path between two fields, where the local commute takes place about 9:00 am.




At the end of the traffic come the four cops who keep it all in order and moving along, despite gawkers' attempts to see what we're doing.




At the end of the day, here's the east wall.





And the west wall. At least you can see them now.