The more messages she received from colleagues in the field, the more she had been itching to get there over the past few weeks. But since 5 July, the time has finally come for Astrid van Oyen, professor of archaeology. After a year of working indoors on campus, she is travelling to Tuscany to put the finishing touches to an excavation project she has been working on since 2012, including years of preparation.
For several weeks each summer, the grassy landscape and olive groves around Cinigiano would be transformed into an archaeological site where Van Oyen, her colleagues from all over the world, and students collected the remains of a Roman settlement day in, day out. ‘Those were always long days. Because the academic calendar – certainly in the Netherlands – only allows for excavations to take place during the summer months, it’s extremely hot there. We usually started at 6 am, worked through to around midday, and then carried on for a while in the afternoon.’
From coins, pins and buckles to bones and pieces of pottery: the archaeologists unearthed all sorts of things. ‘But the most exciting discovery was a smithy. Because it had burnt down, all the tools had been well preserved beneath the ash. We found several hammers, an exceptionally large pair of pliers and part of a plough – presumably one of the smith’s last projects before his smithy caught fire.’
