News/Research

Conference Grants: Rebecca Levitan at the Marco Besso Foundation

28 Nov, 2018

Conference Grants: Rebecca Levitan at the Marco Besso Foundation

Rebecca Levitan received a Fall 2018 BCNM Conference Grant to help cover her costs attending a conference at the Marco Besso Foundation in Rome, Italy. Levitan presented "‘Out of Etruria: Collecting and Context in California." Read more about her experience in her own words below!

On the 26th of October I attended a conference at the Marco Besso Foundation in Rome, Italy, organized by the Archaeological Soprintendenza and la Sapienza University. The theme of the conference was Francesco Mancinelli Scotti, and archaeologist who excavated a large number of Etruscan tombs at the turn of the 20th century in Etruria.

Dr. Lisa Pieraccini and I delivered a paper in English and Italian titled ‘Out of Etruria: Collecting and Context in California’ which explained how Berkeley came to own antiquities from several of the sites excavated by Mancinelli – namely Sovana and Poggio Bucco. We discussed the digital, database, and archival work that we are conducting at Berkeley to learn more about these collections and begin to restitute complete tomb groups, both at Berkeley and between collections housed in the United States (Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston) and at the sites of excavation in Italy (Pitigliano, Florence). We presented within a panel about the presence of artifacts excavated by Mancinelli in foreign museums, but it was also extremely helpful to hear from Italian presenters who were working on objects in context.

Funding to attend this conference through BCNM also allowed for me to visit several of the archaeological sites in question for the first time and meet the museum and Soprintendenza staff who are working on objects associated with those at Berkeley.

Dr. Pierracini and I will be publishing the paper we gave at the Marco Besso Foundation in an edited volume of conference proceedings.