 Today, we're going to descend into the trenches along the Via Appia number 39. And we're going to hear from the principal excavators of this new ongoing excavation that centers around the search for the Sanctuary of Mars of the Republican Era. My name is Rachele Dubini, I'm Professor of Classic Archaeology at the University of Ferrara. This is the excavation of Via Appia Antica 39 that is sponsored by the foundation Patrum Lumen Sustine. We are here with our students coming from the University of Ferrara, coming from all Italy and also around Europe. There are students of BA, MA and also PhD students. This project is also a project of public archaeology. What does it mean? So we are so interesting to share our knowledge with all people who are interested in archaeology, in classical archaeology and on the Appia way. For this reason, we organize all these excavation areas with accessible ways. We wait for visitors, we organize an open day to explain what we are doing here now. But what is most important and is really new for Rome and for Italy is the possibility to come with our students here and dig with them knowing and having the possibility to know directly how the archaeology works. I started the project in 2013 when I discovered in the archives the Superintendents of Rome the documents about the excavation of an ancient building, a monumental building, may be the ancient Eddes martyrs, that is the Temple of Mars. What is the meaning of a Temple of Mars in the Almo Valley? Now we are at the limits of the cities of Rome. So we are not in the city centre. And this temple was so ancient, belonging to the beginning of the 1st century BC. So ancient. And here, what is the sense, the meaning of such a temple? We are indeed in the middle of the Great Sanctuary of Mars, of Mars Grandivus, an ancient god who was so important for the area since he was here to control these limits of the ancient city of Rome and the territories. So it was between the ancient city and the territories, that is the Ager Romanus. From 2013 I tried many times to open an excavation to find other elements, other evidence about this temple and its century. It was possible only last year, in October 2022, to open a dig here. We are near the famous tomb of Geta. This tomb is not really the tomb of the Emperor Geta, but this is the traditional name that was used from Roman people to define it. So we are at the foot of the tomb of Geta and what we are discovering is an ounce of Necropolis. You can join us in Italy for a number of courses. In March, Vesuvian cities, in May, building a Roman city and an architectural course with North Carolina State University, and again in November, another Vesuvian cities course. So look to join us in Italy in 2024, look to new great content, free seminars and master classes on Ancient Rome Live. I am Fabio Torquetta, director of the excavation, and what we have here is a series of tombs beautifully preserved. Of course, we are excavating a number of sites via Apia Antica 39 and we have a beautiful mosaic and a lot of impressive finds are being revealed. I am Luca De Angelis, I am one of the members of the staff of this beautiful excavation behind me. I am an archaeologist. I work as a professional archaeologist and I have dug all over the Mediterranean. And I am one of the people that is contributing to discovering, rediscovering an ancient Roman necropolis that we started digging last year. Well, a didactic excavation is a kind of excavation in which you train and teach archaeology students into becoming hopefully good archaeologists. And so you teach them everything from hand drawing to basically filling out all the archaeological documentation. And of course, you teach them how to dig, which is not just moving earth. It's basically removing the layers of dirt that developed in a site, accumulating one after the other in the course of the centuries and they have to reconstruct the entire story. It's basically like being a detective and out of different clues you have to reconstruct what happened somewhere. Our team consists of several archaeologists who are the ones involved in the excavation and in teaching the archaeology students. And then there is two physical anthropologists who are the ones in charge of excavating all the bones and especially understanding all the stuff that concerns human bones, human remains and getting out of them all the information that we can. And then of course, there is an architect that takes care of the safety of the site and of all the technical things. And of course, we have our scientific director who is Professor Dubini and she is the one running the whole thing. We descend into this very, very interesting excavation. As you can see, the street level in ancient times is very, very low compared to the modern street level. We are actually entering the ruins of one of the mausoleums that we are excavating that is still filled with dirt and rubble. And we find ourselves in front of these beautiful walls from the second century AD and this gorgeous mosaic probably dating back to the same time where we can see a restore and two physical anthropologists at work removing all the human bones after a perfect cleaning and perfect documentation of all the human remains. Also very, very interesting is the other mausoleum on the other side where we see a beautiful fresco decoration on the walls. And this one has, you know, beautiful niches that still have to be explored. And right behind the two Columbaria, that's how we call this kind of mausoleum, there is a long stone block wall that is one of the most interesting and one of the most mysterious things of the whole site and we still have to continue excavating. Let's go check it out. Of course, it was brought to light only at the end of the last campaign. So it was a great cliffhanger for the excavation and as you guys can see it's a very, very massive structuring tufa blocks which is a local volcanic stone and that continues beyond our excavation area both to the west and to the east and we're really eager to go down here to pretty much understand how low the structure goes. Once again to orient ourselves, we're outside the Uralianic Wall Circuit, here's the Via Apientica, where along the Almo River which is a sacred river to the Romans and in fact we know in its vicinity was the sanctuary of Mars, that's what the excavators are looking for and that means due to its proximity to the Almo River you have water infiltration in this site itself. So we see water streaming into the tombs that are currently being excavated. It's a real issue and it's something that the archaeologists have to deal with. We want to thank the excavators for the access to the site to be able to share in the knowledge that is being gained. This is an ongoing excavation and stay tuned to learn how you can participate, how you can visit this site. If you are curious to know more about our project you can also follow us in our social media that is Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, searching for Apientica 39 in our sites and you can sign up and participate in our excavation.