Site 1 Monte Testaccio
In the fall of 2013 I spent 2 weeks in Rome as a volunteer on a dig on Monte Testaccio with ArchaeoSpain. Every morning we would walk to the top of the mountain, along a path of pottery sherds that crunched beneath our feet — pieces of the amphorae that had transported olive oil from Spain and Africa into the heart of empire. The jars were shipped down the Tiber to the Porticus Aemilia, where they were unloaded, emptied and hauled up the sides of Monte Testaccio. Between the years CE 140 to 250, layers upon layers of broken amphorae grew to become a mountain.
On the mountain where the dig took place that year, the archeologists uncovered amphorae from the time of Marcus Aurelius. For four hours in the morning and four hours in the afternoon, I sat on a milk crate around a tub of water with three or four other volunteers. We scrubbed the surfaces of the fragments that had been excavated from the mountain by the Italian workers. On one of the pieces I held in my hand was an inscription written with black pigment confirming that the shipment of olive oil was received by Commodus, appointed counsel to the port of Rome by his father Marcus Aurelius. A past made of broken things revealed itself in a pieced-together present.
Janice Gurney
23 on site review 46 :: travel
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