Making Like Lara Croft!

...only, y'know, with less raiding and more classical nerdery. So really, the only things in common were the tombs and the acrobatic climbing around/spelunking. But why let logic stand in the way of an entertaining post title?

Now, I know some of you are out there saying "Tombs? Spelunking? Lara Croft? Katie, what are you talking about?" Behold! Wikipedia has answers. Okay, no, really--today we had a field trip to the Etruscan necropoleis of Tarquinia and Cerveteri. A necropolis (plural necropoleis), for those who don't know, is a "city of the dead", which is some of the best archaological evidence that we have for our knowledge of Etruscan culture. Etruria was a pre-Roman civilization in Italy, which was eventually taken over by Rome. The Etruscans borrowed culturally from the Greeks and the Phoenicians, and in turn had some influence on Roman culture. Background history lesson over--if you want to know more, Wikipedia does actually have answers :) This post will sadly be relatively light on the photos, as large parts of the sites we saw we couldn't take photos at, either because of museum/site rules or because they were behind glass and the photos turned out poorly. The other, slightly more aggravating reason, is that my camera batter died worryingly quickly, so I'll be checking that out. Thankfully, many of my fellow Centristi took some good photos, and were kind enough to get some shots with me in them, so I'll be posting them as soon as I raid my friends' Facebooks.

Tarquinia is about an hour and a half drive out of Rome, so we were all shoved onto a (very nice) charter bus at 8:00, where we nominally worked on our Latin/Greek for tomorrow, but in actuality most of us slept. The Tarquinia necropolis is primarily underground, so it seemed like we were standing on top of a very large hill, with little sheds all around us.

Like so! It's a very pretty area, and I tried to get a picture of the amazing view you can get from the hilltop, but alas, it's not very well captured by my little camera. Those little sheds you see are the entrances to the tombs, which are all fairly steeply underground--my knees are unhappy with me.

Here's an example of a dromos, a long, narrow corridor cut into the tufa, that leads into a tomb. This is the only dromos we saw at Tarquinia, as all of the other tombs are dug down into flat ground, whereas this one is built into the side of a ridge. It should also give you an idea of the narrowness of these tunnels--there were definitely points today where I felt claustrophobia kicking in.

The Etruscans decorated their tombs lavishly, with brightly painted ceilings and walls, often painted to imitate a tent with poles and fabric ceiling, or a hut with columns holding up the roof. This is one of the tombs painted to look like a tent, and sadly, it's the best picture I have of them--the actual tombs are all behind glass, and it is nearly impossible to get a good shot. I've played with the color a bit on these, because the original photos were mostly just the horrendous yellow that you get when you don't use the flash. They're as true to the original paint colors as I could make them, though.

Here are some posso tombs--the sites for cremated remains. They're basically chest-high stone urns. My friend Joe says that it looks like a Smurf village.

This is an olive tree. I'm in Italy--there has to be at least one picture of an olive tree. Because I like them. And yes, there are olives on the tree.

After we had explored the tombs at Tarquinia and written an impromptu paper on one (because sometimes they need to remind us that we are actually in school and not just on an extended romp around the Italian countryside), we hopped back on the bus to head to the Tarquinian museum, which had some wonderful displays of Greek and Etruscan pottery, as well as two exceptionally well-preserved tombs. Yes, they really did take apart two tombs and move them to the museum...on the third floor. No, I don't understand it either. Alas, we were not permitted to take pictures inside, so the only photos I have are of the surrounding area.

Here was the city street we were walking up to get to the museum. Italian architecture is both amazing and frustrating--it's very lovely, and the cobblestone streets are neat, but the streets are so narrow that you're likely to get run over at any given moment, and cobblestones are not fun to walk on for extended periods of time.

Here's the only shot I have of the interior plaza of the museum--it's a refurbished ducal residence from the Renaissance, so half the time I was there (when I wasn't ooohing and ahhhing at the exhibits) I kept thinking "I want to live here!" The architecture is simply gorgeous, although Florence is the better place to be to admire Renaissance architecture.

When we were done with the museum, and had eaten our bag lunches from the Centro, we got back on the bus to head to Cerveteri. Tarquinia is called a necropolis, but Cerveteri is the one that really deserves the name--it's huge, and very much laid out like a city, with roads and alleyways linking the tombs. The tombs themselves are simply amazing, and there are very few that you're forbidden from going into. Of course, there are also some that you could theoretically go into, but you wouldn't want to--many are overgrown with vegetation at the entrances, and several are completely flooded, as they are situated beneath the water table with insufficient drainage. Basically, with a few exceptions, if you are physically capable of getting into a tomb, you're allowed to explore it.

Here is a tumulus, a type of rounded tomb with a domed top. The doorway that you can see here leads down into the tomb itself, of which I sadly have no photos. This particular tomb is close to the entrance of the necropolis, so it is well-kept and easily accessible. The farther back in the necropolis you go, the closer the tombs are to one another, and the more overgrown they tend to be. There are several that are partially blocked off by blocks of tufa, and I'm sure that any normal person would think that it was madness to go in anyway, but THIS. IS. ICCS!

I'm sorry, I couldn't help it. We did in fact find a partially blocked off tomb entrance, and managed to pretty much lower ourselves down blindly into the darkness, and got to explore a really cool tomb with lots of stone beds and some very impressive architecture. There should be a picture of me climbing out of said tomb somewhere, I'll post it here when I get it. There was also a lot of climbing up on top of tumuli, and wading through brush to find hidden entrances. One Centristo described it as "classics parkour," and I think that's a pretty accurate description. My knees are really, really unhappy with me, but it was tons of fun. I also got to flirt with claustrophobia in some of the really narrow tunnels. One of the narrow passageways (no more than three feet across) went about six feet into the wall, turned fairly sharply, and after another few feet led to a sudden five foot drop into a hole. Having been suitably warned about this, naturally we all had to go see it :)

This is a fairly complete group picture of us crazy Centristi and our professors, as we prepared for our brief lecture before we were allowed to run rampant around the tombs. It's really a great group, and I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying the chance to hang out with so many people as obsessed with classics as I am.

This is the Professor-in-Charge of the program, Dr. Scott Smith. He wandered up to the tumulus entrance while we were starting our lecture, and looked so much like he was posing for a picture that I had to take one. Obviously, he moved while I was getting out my camera, but it's still a fun shot. My professors are of course wonderful, and I'm enjoying classes immensely--going back to conventional lectures at UT is going to be very difficult!

And for those of you saying "didn't you say there wouldn't be many photos?" I said it would be a relatively photo-lite post--we were out there for almost seven hours, and there would have been dozens more if I'd had a working camera! I'll give the Centristi a few days to get all of their photos posted to Facebook, and then I'll raid them to show you all of the pictures that I couldn't take myself :)