Sometimes, working on an archaeological dig, you think you’ve found an ancient Roman coin — and it turns out to be from the ’80s. Yes, the 1980s.

And sometimes, you think you’ve found yet another remnant of the ’80s — and it turns out to be a coin from the Claudian era, nearly 2,000 years ago.

It’s all part of the history of this first-century BCE archaeological site in Italy’s Velino Valley, about an hour north of Rome in the Apennine mountains. And it’s this history that a team of students, professors and other partners from McMaster, St. Mary’s University in Halifax, and around the world are working to unearth, one layer at a time.

The Villa di Tito Field School, co-directed by Martin Beckmann, chair of McMaster’s Greek and Roman studies department, and Myles McCallum, a professor of ancient studies and associate dean of arts at St. Mary’s, has been running on this site since 2018, with a two-year hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Each year, a team of undergraduate and graduate students from both universities, along with other experts from around the world, spend about a month living and working at the site, excavating, cleaning and cataloguing their finds, as well as exploring the surrounding area in their free time.

Subhed about building and its occupants

The site is known as the Villa di Tito because local lore says it was once owned by the emperor Vespasian’s eldest son, Titus, who may have also died here. And while its actual ownership is impossible to prove, there’s no question at this point that the site was, indeed, a Roman villa — a summer home for those with the means to escape the heat and dust of the city.

It certainly feels like it could be a home for rich people, even 2,000 years after its construction.

Situated on an artificial limestone terrace halfway up the side of the valley, it commands impressive views of Lago di Paterno (an ancient lake known as the Lacus Cutiliae) and the surrounding hills.

That terrace — which was extended during the second phase of the villa’s construction to make it more imposing — is supported by a massive concrete base, called a podium, that stretches 60 metres along the rocky hillside, and 30 metres back.

Stabilized by substantial concrete buttresses, the structure, which is visible from across the valley, would have supported two storeys of indoor and outdoor living spaces on the top of the terrace, all arranged around a large central courtyard surrounded by columns. There is no second storey now, but there are the remains of a staircase.

It’s not hard to imagine a party of wealthy Romans, laughing, talking, drinking wine and enjoying the expansive view of the valley.

But there’s a mystery surrounding this spot: While the structure would have been impressive, archeological evidence suggests the villa was only ever occupied by people of more modest means.

Well-off, but not opulent

In the rear of the terrace’s ground floor are the remains of a series of rooms — likely the residential part of the villa — where students have uncovered items that indicate the villa’s residents were not exactly members of ancient Rome’s one per cent.

For instance, in Room 10 — an impressive room with a niche at the back large enough to hold a human-sized statue — they’ve found small white stones called tesserae that were used to create a now-lost mosaic on the floor.

And while a mosaic floor sounds fancy, one that was all-white — or even black-and-white — would have been just a step above bare concrete in terms of status: Comfortable, but hardly the luxurious fittings of an imperial summer home.

Remnants of plaster are plain white or orange, rather than elaborately frescoed and decorated, as would have been common in a wealthy person’s vacation home. Similarly, delicate fragments of oil lamps and pieces of substantially decorated glass vessels are evidence of a nice, but not opulent, standard of living.

Wherever the finds are from, it’s always a thrill for students when they’re unearthed.

One exciting discovery, a few years ago, was a well that had been closed up during the villa’s construction.

Because water sources were sacred to a god or goddess, offerings had been placed in the well, including a glass perfume bottle, a polished bronze mirror, and an oil lamp decorated with an image of either Ganymede or the goddess Hebe.

“It’s absolutely amazing when you see something in the ground that isn’t just dirt or a rock,” says Kathryn Gray, a former St. Mary’s student who was part of the 2023 team.

“It’s an awe-inspiring moment when you find something that’s been in the ground for so long, that’s existed for 2,000 years. It’s wild to try and conceptualize at first, especially when you find things, like glass, that are so delicate.”

On a lower level, hemmed in by the buttresses and built into the podium holding up the terrace, is the cryptoporticus — essentially, a walk-out basement. It would have been used for food storage, cooking, grain processing and, potentially, wine- and olive oil-making.

And, in the same way the building’s podium provided the foundation for the villa’s once-lavish structure, the people who worked there were essential supports for those who lived above.

“It often feels like Roman history is told through a series of great men, and you just hear about emperors — you see the big fancy buildings in Rome, but that isn’t how 99 per cent of the population lived,” explains Rosalie Swenor, a McMaster math graduate who worked on the dig in 2022 and 2023.

“People forget that Rome was a slave society – all these villas were run by enslaved people. They didn’t have great lives, but it’s important to know about them, especially because there tends to be so little evidence that they’ve left behind.”

Happily, the team has found evidence of what those people may have been doing, even if their identities are still a mystery.

In the cryptoporticus, pieces of amphorae, cookware and storage containers for wine or olive oil called dolia, as well as some hard volcanic stone that was used in a hand mill for grinding grain, all point to a range of agricultural activities.

Even the dirt provides clues. Archaeobotanist Katie Miller, a PhD student from Royal Holloway University in London, is painstakingly analyzing soil samples to see what she can learn from the organic matter that’s been left behind – what people may have been eating, for example, or what crops may have been grown.

Using a series of spouts, buckets and sieves, she catches the lightweight remains of plants, bones, charcoal and insects in a fine-meshed sieve, separating them from a layer of heavier sand, stone and shell.

Once this lighter, organic layer is dry, Miller will examine it under a microscope to get the full story. So far she has found the usual things: different types of grains, pulses such as lentils, and agricultural weeds — but even these give valuable clues as to life in the villa.

“We can identify social interactions and hierarchies depending on who has access to what sorts of food,” explains Miller.

“A villa site, which is run by an elite social hierarchy, might have access to a lot of exotic plants like herbs and spices, which would indicate trade from other parts of the world. And even if we don’t find those types of remains, that tells us something as well.”

Finding answers leads to new questions

On the upper level and in the cryptoporticus, the age of the artifacts — like coins and ceramics — has revealed another mystery: While most Roman sites show centuries of occupation, with artifacts spanning hundreds of years, this one, built in the first century BCE and occupied around the beginning of the first century CE, seems to have been intensively used for less than 100 years.

An important clue about the villa’s occupation is the absence of something they had expected to find.

The site has turned up many fragments of an orange-coloured pottery known as Italian terra sigilata, or ITS, which was made all over Italy until the end of the first century CE, when it was replaced with a new type of pottery called African red slip (ARS).

ARS was the Corelware of its day, and much, much cheaper than ITS – about 1/100th of the price. It quickly flooded the Roman market, leaving production of ITS to languish and die out.

Tellingly, no ARS has been found at the Villa di Tito site, meaning that the villa’s use must have stopped before ARS became commonly used.

So what happened? No one is sure, but everyone’s best guess is that the villa was destroyed by a massive earthquake — the area around the villa is highly prone to seismic activity, and the remains of the villa’s structure suggest a level of damage that would have made rebuilding difficult.

But even if the villa wasn’t actively used for much longer than a century, it’s still providing lots of material for research and study for the faculty, students and other experts who return to the site each summer — first digging up the metres of protective backfill and landscaping fabric that keeps the previous year’s excavations safe, then picking up where they left off the season before.

This year’s finds have been particularly interesting, says Beckmann.

Along with unearthing the west side of the villa structure and its central courtyard, the team also found the remains of a base of one of the courtyard columns. (Ever-economical, Romans built their columns from pieces of pie-shaped brick, which they then covered with plaster and, often, painted to look like marble.)

Perhaps most exciting? A large deposit of ancient garbage.

“It’s what every archaeologist loves to find,” laughs Beckmann. “We now have plenty of evidence to examine that should show us what daily life was like for the inhabitants of the villa.”

Students touch Actual history

Whether they’re digging up garbage, pottery, structural remains or coins, the students in the field school are gaining valuable experience beyond what they’ve learned in the classroom.

“This is experiential learning, and I think more and more students are looking for that kind of opportunity,” says McCallum.

“It’s about coming out and actually touching history. You can read about this in the classroom and see PowerPoints and videos, but it’s different when you can touch things and actually see how archaeologists go about excavating things.”

It’s hard work, and the days can be long and hot – but it’s all worth it. Just ask Jordan Scoville, a McMaster student studying anthropology and archaeology who was part of the 2024 field school.

“Participating in the Villa di Tito field school this summer was an incredible experience,” she says. “It was so rewarding to apply what I’ve learned in the classroom about archaeology and Greek and Roman studies to a real dig site, and to help uncover the history of this region.

“Living in the Italian countryside and doing what I love every day continued to fuel my passion for archaeology, and I’m so grateful I got to take part in this opportunity.”

While the Villa di Tito Field School will not be running in 2025, you can find out more about McMaster’s Greek and Roman studies programs on the department’s website.