How did Rome create new cities to build an Empire?

Our goals for 2019 are to answer these questions through excavation and fine grained analysis of material culture. We are choosing to excavate in field A as we have access to it, and it is a domestic quarter allowing us direct comparison with previous excavations. Working under the auspices of the Soprintendenza Archeologica, Bella Arti e Paesaggio per le Province di Alessandria, Asti e Cuneo, we will be starting excavation this summer. We will open two 10x10m trenches. The depth of Roman remains is .75-1.25 m. We do not anticipate any difficulties accessing the levels. Our trenches cover what we believe to be part of a house and the outside street- as a comparison and to make sure we do not miss any signs of incorporation of domestic spaces outside the home.

The project will take place over 6 weeks, one week preparation to set up the labs, 4 weeks of excavating, one week of post-excavation work to secure and stabilize finds and report to the Italian Government. 

Laboratory :

In order to better collect evidence we will be hiring Dr. Erica Rowan, from the University of Royal Holloway to perform the environmental finds analysis. We are also employing a pottery specialist Dr. Melania Semeraro who is familiar with the local ceramic culture. 

Over the previous four years the PIs and small finds specialists have become familiar with the material culture of the site by studying the collections at Genoa and Turin. Using this information, the regional characteristics can be established, and fine grain nuanced analysis can take place. Weekly meetings will take place to check the progress of each group and to make sure that both English and Italian reports are created in a timely fashion. Initial finds processing and recording will take place in the clean lab. 

Student:

Student training will commence and continue through the season. Students will be introduced to the multiple types of archaeological processing happening in the lab. Each student will rotate into different laboratory positions to learn specialist skills. The added benefit of this is processing the finds and recording them will be a full-time task running parallel to excavation. The ongoing processing of data during the duration of the project will ensure the publication and dissemination of our results in a timely manner. However, in order to get their advanced training, they will be assigned a lab to focus on during this initial set up- after the first week they will continue to learn in the lab for their chosen specialty.

We will finish excavation in Week 5 and wrap up our project on site. We will organize with the Soprintendenza di Archeologia for the conservation and deposition of the finds. All archaeological finds will be stored by the Soprintendenza. We will back fill all trenches at the end of each season in order to protect the archaeology for future study. In order that we leave the site in a pristine state we will also be utilizing this time to improve the overall appearance and cleanliness of the site by weeding and collecting garbage. We anticipate that all finds processing will take place during the field season however week 6 will be devoted to post excavation analysis and finishing reports for the Italian government. Also, we will be taking down our camp and making plans for the 2020 season.