Arma Veirana 2022 Season: Post 1


T- 5 days until we're off! 

Welcome to the first blog post from the Arma Veirana 2022 Summer season! Our group consists of Dr. Jamie Hodgkins, Dr. Caley Orr, their daughter Noor, and the following graduate students from CU Denver: Kyle Pontieri, Sarah Manassee, Ari Del Olmo Medina, Caitlin Konchan, and Lia Plankenhorn-Farrell. We are beyond excited for the incredible opportunity to work in the field and to grow our knowledge base and skills in zooarchaeology and anthropological lab work. For four weeks, we will be analyzing faunal material from the Arma Veirana site and entering data into two separate computer programs, Access and ArcMap, for later analyses. Alongside this lab work in Erli, we will also have the opportunity to visit local museums and immerse ourselves in the local culture and landscape. 

Our first day in Italy is Monday July 11th, stay tuned for more updates and posts as the field season gets underway!

Location of Arma Veirana Cave (Map taken from this Article on the project)

Erli, Italy (Photo from Wikimedia Commons)


To prepare for the field season, we students have been working in Dr. Hodgkins' lab at CU Denver, practicing bone coding, identifying faunal remains, and gathering up our lab equipment. 


Sarah and Ari practicing bone coding in the lab.

Caitlin prepping computer programs in the lab. 

Sarah working on identifying this animal bone and entering data into Access. 



 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Arma Veirana 2022 Season Post 7: Caves and Beaches

Image
  Arene Candide We had the privelege of touring a significant archaeological site near Finale Ligure yesterday. Arene Candide is a remarkable cave with a 10 meter thick sequence of excavated sediment revealing artifacts and human remains from the Paleolithic to the Roman periods. After parking at the nearby train station, we hiked to the mouth of cave where our tour guide awaited us. We were shown throughout the excavated areas of the cave by a well-informed Italian guide. She explained the excavation methods utilized by archaeologists working within the cave, the various stratigraphic layers throughout the dig site, the different time periods in which artifacts and skeletal material were discovered, and the archaeological significance of the site in understanding the peopling of the Mediterranean in the Pleistocene and early Holocene. One of the most distinctive finds from Arene Candide is "the Prince", the 30,000 year-old burial of a 15 or 16 year-old male. "The Prince
Read more

Arma Veirana 2022 Season Post 10: Community

Image
 Ciao! Well, we've reached the end of our time here and our final blog post. It's hard to believe over a month has passed since we first arrived, it feels like time moves differently in this little corner of Italy. This past week, we students completed a preliminary analysis of the Mousterian layers of the cave and thousands of faunal specimens from 6 different stratigraphic aggregates. Some questions of interest were: which animals are represented in highest frequency and how does this differ between the layers? Where are the most densely butchered bones found? So far it is evident that bovids and cervids and long-bone elements were present and butchered the most. Also of interest to us was that each layer contained bear bones, except for one. The data and analyses will help drive future research questions and excavations to increase our knowledge and understanding of the habitation and use of Arma Veirana by Neandertals, modern humans, and other animals.   One of the most val
Read more