Friday,
August 17, 2007
Ancient Estruscan
Tomb Unearth in
The ANNOTICO
Report
Not only is
Furthermore,
Therefore while
the following is exciting, it is almost like just another float in a continuos parade of discoveries. and
what has come out of the ground is only a fraction of what is still
underneath.
Volunteer archeologists unearth an ancient tomb in
Italy
International Herald Tribune
By Elisabetta Povoledo
Friday, August 17, 2007
CASENOVOLE,
Then, earlier
this year, woodsmen began to clear brush in the area, and Marcocci
- who had felt the tomb had been safe as long as it was hidden in a forest -
realized he had to act.
"I became
worried that what's supposed to be the patrimony of mankind would become the
patrimony of an individual," he said.
Armed with a
permit from archeological authorities - in
What they found
last week was a complete surprise: a more than 2000-year-old tomb with a cache
of almost perfectly preserved ceramic and bronze funerary objects, including
cremation urns for more than two dozen people.
"It was an
incredible moment," said Giacomo Ghini, an archeology student who first spied the tops of
the urns buried in dirt in the burial chamber. "We weren't sure there
would be anything there."
The find, experts
say, is not particularly exceptional in terms of the rarity of the unearthed
objects. The burial chamber, a little less than two meters, or six feet, long
and about 1.8 meters wide, is not painted, and the objects inside - probably
Hellenistic and dating to between the first and the third centuries B.C. - are
quite modest in make. They are now in safe-keeping at a nearby city hall but
will be turned over to state archeologists to be cleaned, restored and studied.
But as far as
this local group of archeologists is concerned, finding the tomb was like
stumbling on King Tutankhamen's gold.
"It really
brought locals together; it made them proud to live here," said Carla Bonsanti, Marcocci's wife and a
member of Odysseus, the amateur archeological association that carried out the
dig in this far-flung part of the Tuscan Maremma,
once a remote and wild region known for its horse-riding cattle breeders.
If it weren't for
amateur groups like Odysseus, archeology experts agree, much of Italy's ancient
heritage would be even more at risk than it already is to random plundering by
unscrupulous tomb robbers.
Gabriella
Barbieri, the state official in charge of protecting the area's archeological
heritage, who granted permission for the excavation, said local volunteer
groups were very important when it came to safeguarding the territory from tomb
robbers and vandalism.
"The more
citizens are concerned, the more they can help us," she said. "The
state can't be everywhere at once."
Inadequate
protection of
But in recent
years
Despite recent
successes, however, vigilance must continue to remain high because what has
come out of the ground is only a fraction of what is still underneath.
Between 2001
and 2006
"As long as
there are Etruscan tombs to be found there's going to be the risk of tombaroli," or ravagers of archaeological sites,
said Maria Grazia Celuzza, the director of the
archeological museum in Grosseto, about 20 kilometers, or 12 miles, south of
here.
More than the
monetary value of the objects themselves, scholars argue that every violated
tomb is an unimaginable loss to furthering the study of ancient civilizations.
There is much
still to be learned about the Etruscans, for instance, an ancient
population with a distinct language and traditions that dominated what is
now central Italy for about a millennia, until they were conquered by the
Romans.
Groups like
Odysseus, as well as university archeology programs, also provide crucial
manual labor to the state's cultural heritage authorities, which simply
cannot afford to fund hundreds of archeological excavations each year.
Because the tomb
at Casenovole is not a major site, it is likely that
only local, amateur archeologists like Marcocci and Ghini would have ever expressed the desire to excavate it.
(Both, however, are about to graduate with degrees in archeology. The
Italian state does not give permits to dig to people without experience or
training, and all aspects of the dig are supervised, said Barbieri, the
state official.)
"There are
always archeological emergencies in
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