Alison Telfer reports on the on-going excavations at Sant’ Omobono Rome and the developments of week five. ..
At the beginning of this week we again compared the level we had reached in trench D10 with that of the known part of the Archaic temple… we were about 20cm below! Where was it?!
Last weekend, two friends from the UK came out for a visit. I suggested that they come to site on Tuesday, rather than on Monday and it turned out to be a good omen. Lo and behold, on Tuesday morning we dug down to a layer of yellow clay at the western end of the trench. We trowelled it back, heading east, and the clay started to dive down. We followed it, only to hit a large dump of tufa (volcanic) stones. It's possible that the stones were used as backfill for some sort of linear hole and at first glance it looks like someone has hacked into the clay and dumped the stones. However, it is also possible that the clay falls away because of an earlier archaeological feature causing it to subside. Only time will tell.