Grove City students participate in archaeology program

Staff report

GROVE CITY, PA.

This past summer, students from Grove City College traveled to Sardina, Italy, to participate in an archaeology conservation program.

Mark Graham, a Grove City history professor, helped select and prepare five students for the experience: Sara Cammenga (’16), Geoffrey Hall (’17), Lacey Lobdell (’16), Vincent Michael (’17) and Eloise Smith (’17).

The project was an inaugural international service-learning opportunity for both the students and faculty. Robert Nardi, one of Italy’s most-accomplished conservation experts and the director of the Centro di Conservazione Archaelogica, invited Grove City to be a member of a three-college consortium, which includes Connecticut College and Randolph College.

Participants spent the majority of their time in the small town of Cabras, on the west coast of Sardina, working to clean, conserve, map and catalog stone fragments from life-size statues that date back to well before the Greek archaic era.

They began their work by learning about the importance of preserving cultural heritage, as well as practicing the basic technique they would need to use throughout the excavation. Students also spent time getting to know the townspeople and immersing themselves in the local culture.

The project, “The Conservation of the Nuragic sculptures of Monte Prama,” was assigned the top award in the Conservation category by the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage and Europa Nostra Awards. In addition, in June, the project won the overall “Public Choice Award,” the only one assigned out of the 28 winning projects by the same prize committee for the European Union.