Modern archaeology cannot turn a blind eye to its importance in contemporary society. There is a huge and growing appetite for visiting archaeological sites as global tourism grows at an extraordinary pace. So, although my European Research Council project under the Tuscan sun does not envisage a popular archaeological outcome for our main excavations at Vetricella, there is nonetheless a compelling need to think about making something permanent at the site that will attract tourists and serve the local community.
Of course, the name – Tuscany – equates in most minds to tourism. Chianti-shire and San Gimignano, let alone Florence, Pisa, and Siena, play host to millions in the summer months. Unsurprisingly, the tourists tend to be drawn to honey-pots, and smaller places miss out. Western Tuscany – the Maremma – is typical in this sense. Some beaches are packed all summer; hill-towns like Massa Marittima similarly. But the majority of Maremma villages rarely attract more than a handful of the curious who are either avoiding the crowds or taking advantage of cheaper lodgings.
Which brings me back to our dilemma. Our project is uncovering the earliest medieval origins of the metal-extraction industries, their commercial histories, and their importance in underpinning the extraordinary wealth of later medieval and Renaissance Tuscany. The main excavation at Vetricella is a triple-ditched fortress of an unusual, dare I say exceptional, kind, once situated close to a lagoon that opened out onto the Tyrrhenian Sea. Our triple-ditched fortress was briefly one of Europe’s 9th-century marvels. The architect must have arrived with a piece of rope, and from a central compass point charged his work-force with digging deep V-shaped ditches into the soft prehistoric lagoon silts at 44, 88 and 132 Liutprand (early medieval Lombard) feet from a central point. Quite why the precision was necessary remains a mystery. Was the architect copying somewhere he knew: circular fortresses in Flanders or the Rhineland, or even the round city of Baghdad? Any conclusion will be speculation, of course, and we’ll never really know his motives. But one thing is certain: only a 9th-century aerial photographer would have appreciated the symmetry.
