Archeological Field Conservation at Selinunte, Sicily

SUMMARY
Selinunte was the western-most ancient Greek city in the empire, located on the southwestern coast of Sicily. It was famous for its large and numerous temples, particularly those on its acropolis. The Institute of Fine Arts excavations at the site, directed by Dr. Clemente Marconi, are an international mission undertaken in collaboration with the University of Milan.

2022 SEASON
While at Selinunte I worked on stone, architectural fragments, polychromy, high and low fire ceramic, iron, and bronze. I was proud to have treated several of the most exciting finds of the season, including a stone mold, two oil lamps, two terracotta figurines, an iron spearhead, and several decorative arybolloi which were buried as votives.

We also performed two block lifts during the season. The first was of two crossed iron blades from Trench O inside the temple. These, like the arybolloi, were found in the "foundation deposit" immediately beneath the Temple R's original floor (ca. 570 BCE). Examples of other crossed blades have been found in previous seasons, establishing the practice of dedicating iron weapons at Selinunte.

Our second block lift was more complicated, this time of the secondary deposition of a heavily fragmented exterior hearth made of fired-in-place clay, found with a large amount of ash. The archeologists currently date this hearth from between 627 BCE (the foundation of the city), and 570 BCE (the construction of Temple R), making it at least two and a half millennia old. Due to its low-fired nature, the hearth fragments were extraordinarily fragile, and it was often difficult to determine where dirt stopped and semi-fired clay began. In our last week on site, we cleaned and stabilized all the major fragments with polyvinyl butyral.