FSU Classics students research hidden architectural wonders in Italian colony of Cosa
Researchers in Classics have a reputation for going the extra mile to further their discoveries, document ancient history and gain an understanding of civilization that no textbook can match.
For Florida State University students studying under the direction of professor Andrea U. De Giorgi, whose expertise is in Roman archaeology, that quest for knowledge takes them more than 5,000 miles away from Tallahassee to the Roman colony of Cosa (Ansedonia) in central Italy.
“Cosa is basically the place that explains it all when it comes down to Roman architecture and city planning,” De Giorgi said, sitting in his Dodd Hall office. “It was built in the 3rd Century, B.C. It’s very old. It’s the place where local builders experimented a lot with as far as architecture, hydraulics. The city is absolutely stunning, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.
“It was occupied until the Middle Ages,” he said.
De Giorgi said the explorations by the students gives them a sense of creative thinking, design and planning – including how to get water to an area where there is no aqueduct or spring.
In early May, students from FSU will travel back to Cosa, where they will live in a rustic former fort. The conditions aren’t perfect. There’s one shower, room to bunk down after a day of exploring the remains of Cosa and the study of its once elaborate bath house complex.
“In a way, we have a soft spot for this place,” De Giorgi said of FSU’s return to the region beginning in 2013. “We’re very much at a junction where the project is taking off.”
Allison Smith said the venture gives students the chance to explore Roman architecture and to understand the extent of planning, vision and survival in early times.
“In Cosa, you are learning side by side,” she said of the archeology studies that will be conducted until the students return in July.
Smith is a fifth-year doctoral student working toward completing her dissertation on the various construction processes and networks that were necessary to build the private and public Roman bath complexes of central Italy.
“I chose to further my excavation experience at Cosa not only because it was an excavation affiliated with Florida State University, but because I found Roman baths fascinating well before I began my dissertation,” she said. “For me, Cosa provides a wonderful opportunity to explore the intricate nature of bath architecture at a site renowned in the history of Italian archaeology.”
Ann Glennie, her Tallahassee roommate, also is a fifth-year doctoral student. Her dissertation focuses on ancient sites which collect all or most of their water through rainwater harvesting practices.
“Cosa is my primary case study, but is being compared alongside other Mediterranean sites and American sites,” she said. “With this broad data set of peoples who both were and were not in direct contact with one another, I'm interested in how ancient peoples coped with environmental deficits (like having no water source) and what civic and/or social organization developed to maintain the water systems.
“I became intrigued by how Cosan residents sustained their water needs solely from rainwater.”
Cosa has been fertile territory for university researchers dating back to the late 1940s.
Researchers have determined it was founded in 273 BCE in the territory of Etruria (roughly equivalent to modern Tuscany). The Romans had fought a series of battles with the Etruscans and confiscated territory from them, including the hilltop on which Cosa would be founded a few years later. It is classified by scholars as a Latin colony rather than a Roman colony because the residents did not have Roman citizenship status.
The Florida State connection
Coca Excavations, a partnership between FSU and Bryn Mawr resumed under De Giorgi, who was a student of Russell T. Scott at Bryn Mawr. Scott was a student of Frank Brown, who began explorations there in 1948.
The focus has been on the colony’s bath complex. The baths were identified by Brown during his survey of the colony in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but never had been excavated.
The students are focused on the public bath, often found in Rome, Glennie said. The complexes have been determined to have included sauna and hot rooms, where guests would go between cool and cold water rooms. There were areas for exercise.
Researchers are interested in how the baths were designed, the availability of hot and cold rooms, and the circulation of water.
“We have found both hot and cold rooms, identifiable by the types of building materials used and, in the case of the hot rooms, the presence of architectural elements that would have provisioned them with heat,” Glennie said. Rainwater was collected in a large reservoir across the street from the baths and funneled under the street in a large subterranean channel into a large cistern below the bath complex.”
“The bathhouse was built like a modern spa as we have today,” De Giorgi said. “Our modern spas are like a reflection of what Roman baths were like.”
Contact senior writer Byron Dobson at firstname.lastname@example.org or on Twitter @byrondobson.
Help the students fundraise
Seventeen students from FSU will be part of the contingent traveling to Cosa this summer, including six doctoral students, three master’s degree students and four undergraduates.
The cost is about $2,500, plus airfare, which can range from $700 to $1,500 roundtrip.
A major cost for the team is rental cars to get back and forth to the site. Those costs range from $3,500 to $4,000.
For more on fundraising efforts, visit www.customink.com/fundraising/cosa-70th-anniversary.