Historians and archaeologists have been making discoveries along the Tiber River in Italy’s Terni province for nearly 170 years. Here, close to the modern town of Montecchio, decades of archaeological digs have uncovered a variety of tombs and artifacts that could lead to groundbreaking new information surrounding one of Italy’s least-known civilizations.
Professor Sarah Harvey, Ph.D., in the Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies is currently co-director of one such dig, exploring the necropolis of the Vallone di San Lorenzo, which was originally discovered by Domenico Golini in 1855. With more than 50 chamber tombs discovered since the 19th century, the necropolis has been stripped of many items that raiders and thieves of previous centuries would consider valuable, such as precious metals. Yet, many insightful objects remain.
Read more about the archaeological dig at the Vallone di San Lorenzo
Among the items Harvey and her team have uncovered include half an articulated horse skeleton, the blade of an iron sword (pictured above) and a large quantity of pottery vessels and shards. Some of the artifacts are smaller, more personal items, such as hairpins or spindle whorls. While the dig is revealing clues as to whether the tombs housed the dead from families of wealth or those of little means, or if those buried were men, women or children, for example, they still don’t know exactly who these people were.
“It’s a really interesting site, and one of the intriguing things is that we don’t know who lived there,” Harvey said. “We don’t know where their settlement was. We don’t even have any inscriptions about what language they spoke.”
As Harvey explains it, the Tiber River in the pre-Roman period was a channel that facilitated trade across the central Apennine Mountains, which means there was very likely a mix of populations passing through the region at different times.
“We view it [the site] kind of as at a crossroads,” Harvey said.
Historical records show that primarily two main people groups populated this area: the Etruscans and the Umbrians. While more is known about the Etruscans, it appears that the Umbrians likely settled in the region first, somewhere between the 9th and 4th centuries B.C.
One way Harvey and the team look to dig deeper into uncovering more about this ancient site is through a technology called photogrammetry. In the below video, Harvey talks about the technology that gives archaeologists a 360-degree view of artifacts with just the click of a mouse.
Heritage Science Journal describes photogrammetry as the “art, science and technology of obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment through processes of recording, measuring and interpreting photographic images and patterns of recorded radiant electromagnetic energy and other phenomena.” This technology is also commonly used in academic environments for such subjects as engineering and architecture, geography and even anatomy classes.
While the dig will continue this coming summer, Harvey added that she has been asked to create models of some of the artifacts her team has discovered at the site so far to display at Satterfield Hall. She has done some training with the Design Innovation Hub to utilize 3D printing to create the models.
At the necropolis, Harvey used photogrammetry to not only model the artifacts but also model the tombs and soil layers as they excavated. At the below link, you can see a model of Tomb R2, which was the only tomb of its type at the site.
“This is an example of a model of the foundations of the tomb that the painted vessel is from,” Harvey said. “We have found a remarkable variety of tombs in this area of the necropolis. This particular tomb is the only one of its type at the site, but only the foundations remain (which you can see in the model, along with two long stones that were used as funerary benches within it). It was constructed of travertine blocks rather than carved into the natural stone layer as the other chamber tombs that are more typical of the necropolis. The family was wealthy and important, judging from the wealth of artifacts (gold ring, iron mace-like scepter head, other metal artifacts and a huge quantity and variety of ceramics, including imported Greek vessels). The ceramics I modeled and a few of which I will try to print are from that tomb.”