Liquidated sunshine poured down on
the coastal Tuscan hill, where sits the ancient settlement of Cosa, whose
landscape is now dotted with olive trees and Roman ruins. Breaking the
Piranesi-esque beauty, tufa ruins paired with sprawling nature, are long rectangles
scraped free of grass and rock, which lay open and exposed.
In addition to these barren areas,
large spaces of tight, careful brickwork are set deep into the ground,
revealing, tantalizingly, sections of the bath complex, one of the main features
of Cosa. This is where I am working,
perched on a small section of earth, high above an open trench, the bottom of
which shows an intact floor and large chucks of mortar covered with black and
white mosaics. The olive tree shading me shakes gently in the peaceful breeze,
a melodic sound that blends with the metallic twang of trowels scraping on
rubble comprised of bricks, tiles, and rocks. This is all muted by a pointed
rock jutting into my knee. What looked as though it would be another broken
terracotta destined for the rock pile turned out to be a piece of architectural
relief, decorated with an egg and dart pattern and a female head, although it
is badly worn. This discovery was soon joined by the exciting unearthing of a
well-preserved brick stamp, still legible, and thus dateable to the reign of
Hadrian. These blocks of information are important since they demonstrated an ancient interest not only in using recycled materials but in importing bricks as well. The
objects found throughout last week and hopefully through the coming one as well
will continue to be scraped out of the ground, in an attempt to better
understand the lingering questions that surround the site.
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