For the second consecutive year, the archaeological excavation of Roca Vecchia, conducted under a ministerial concession by the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Salento, will be an international field school (https://www.fieldsciences.org/program/2024-italy-roca-vecchia/).
Starting in 2023, Roca Vecchia is in fact one of the 14 worldwide destinations selected by the scientific board of the Center for Field Sciences in Los Angeles (https://www.fieldsciences.org) to make up the range of archaeological field schools to which university students from the United States of America can enroll and through which they can acquire educational credits certified by Culver Stockton College, which is School of Record for the initiative.
The next excavation campaign will take place in September 2024 and will see the participation of up to 10 U.S. students who will be joined by students from the Bachelor’s and Master’s degree programs, the School of Specialization in Archaeology and the Doctoral Program in Cultural Heritage Sciences of the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Salento.
This is an extraordinary opportunity both for the historic Roca research project, directed since 2021 by Prof. Teodoro Scarano of the University of Salento itself, and for the training of the Italian students, who last September shared the excavation campaign with five students from the University of Oregon, the San Francisco University and Los Angeles California University and the North Idaho College.
Thus, the partnership between the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Salento and the Center for Field Sciences is consolidated, also thanks to the support of institutional and private stakeholders in our territory: in fact, the operation is carried out in agreement with the ABAP Superintendence for the Provinces of Brindisi and Lecce and with the support of the Municipality of Melendugno and a number of local commercial actors who are in charge of the services necessaryto guarantee the students accommodation, food and logistics. At the following link you will find the post on the Roca Archaeological Project Facebook page with 8 screenshots from the Center for Field Sciences website, which should also fit as supporting images to the text for our website: LINK