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10/11/2024

Art History Students Participate in Summer Excavations at Cetamura del Chianti

Art History
“Walking the paths of those that came before us teaches us so much about who we are.” – Corinne Roethke

This summer, five Art History students traveled to Tuscany to participate in the International Programs Archaeological Field School at Cetamura del Chianti under the direction of Classics professor Nancy T. de Grummond. The site, first discovered in 1964, has been excavated by Florida State University since 1973. Generations of FSU students have studied Cetamura’s rich history of Etruscan, Roman, and Italian medieval material culture and gained experience there in archaeological excavation, object handling, and museum services. This year’s cohort of scholars was supported by the generous Orth Reckford Classics Fund for Research and Archives, endowed by Charlotte Orth Reckford in honor of her late husband, Langford Eminent Scholar professor emeritus Kenneth J. Reckford.

Undergraduate student Corinne Roethke served as a Charlotte Orth Reckford Docent on the Cetamura del Chianti field site. In her role, Corinne led tours of the dig site for visitors, field school students, and donors, in addition to assisting in excavating and classifying materials from dig trenches. 

Museum & Cultural Heritage Studies MA student Sarah Moloney and recent Art and Art History alumna Allison Boroff served as the site’s Bucher-Loewenstein interns. The two curated an exhibition about archeology in Tuscany for the Ruth A. Owen Galleria Belle Arti at the FSU study center in Florence. Sarah and Allison researched, planned, and installed the exhibit while performing fieldwork in Cetamura. After six months of planning and research, their show “Living off the Land: Etruscans at Cetamura del Chianti” opened on June 3, 2024, presenting the relationship between the region’s natural environment and the Etruscans’ agricultural innovations. 

PhD student Hudson Kauffman worked onsite as an Orth Reckford Fellow researching bronze vessels called situlae (buckets), determining how the objects were utilized and by whom and comparing them to similar vessels across Europe. During his research, Hudson worked as a trench supervisor for an excavation trench believed to hold walls connected to the site’s medieval castle. Although it was a “pretty slow and arduous trench to dig,” Kauffman’s trench team was able to find glass shards, Roman and Etruscan red gloss and black gloss pottery, iron nails, and most notably, a silver Greek coin from the 3rd century BCE. In September, Hudson joined other Reckford fellows in presenting the results of their summer research at the annual Cetamura Day conference on the FSU Tallahassee campus.

Alumna Tanya Pattison-Arraiza (MA ’24) traveled to the site during the last two weeks of the lab season to document and model many of the dig’s Etruscan finds. Tanya photographed pottery shards and coins for later research by Dr. Nancy Degrummond, Dr. Ceil Bare, and Dr. Laura Holland. She also documented excursions and objects for fellows completing research at Cetamura del Chianti. Working with Immersive Scholarship librarian Matthew Hunter she also created digital reproductions of artifacts using a 3D Artec scanner and photogrammetry processing.

Students & prospective students: For information about more ways you can receive support for research travel in Art History, visit Fees & Funding.
Alumni & friends: If you would like to support FSU Art History students in their travel and research, please consider a donation to the Christopher M.S. Johns Award or the Patricia Rose Fund:  Support Art History @ FSU