[In-Person/Online] Lecture by Astrid Van Oyen, March 5 , 2024: “Drama in the Tuscan countryside: excavations of the Marzuolo Archaeological Project (2016-2024)”
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The archaeological site of Podere Marzuolo (Cinigiano, provincia di Grosseto), occupies a plateau bordered by the River Orcia, a tributary of the Ombrone. In the second half of the 1st century BC, Marzuolo was installed as one of many small sites that were part of a wave of rural development after the conclusion of the devastating Civil Wars. As a small rural center, Marzuolo hosted craftspeople and farmers and catered to the demand for foodstuffs, tools, and services of the surrounding population. The picture is one of a peaceful, rural existence; of a rural village frequented by peasants, craftspeople, and the occasional peddler. Yet our multi-year, intensive archaeological investigations have shown that this picture of uneventful rural life is a figment of the historical imagination that glosses over the many turns, shifts, events – in short, the drama – of the Roman countryside. This lecture provides a glimpse of this rural drama: a wine business gone wrong; a smithy that burnt down; a potter trying and failing to do something new. In the process, it reflects on archaeological methodology and on the importance of reconstructing human lives on the big stage of history.
Astrid Van Oyen is Professor of Archaeology at Radboud University, Nijmegen. Previously, she was Associate Professor at Cornell University. Astrid is a Roman archaeologist focusing on Italy and the western provinces, with particular interests in the socioeconomic history of the non-elite, rural economies, and materiality. She is author of How Things Make History: The Roman Empire and its Terra Sigillata Pottery (Amsterdam University Press, 2016) and The Socio-Economics of Roman Storage: Agriculture, Trade, and Family (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Since 2016, Astrid is scientific director of the Marzuolo Archaeological Project that reconstructs the lifeworlds of the Roman rural farmers and craftspeople.
The conference is open to the public free of charge. Pre-registration is required to guarantee seating or online attendance.
The NIKI is located in Florence, Viale Evangelista Torricelli 5.