Marijke Gnade says goodbye to UvA, but continues digging in Satricum: “There is still so much to discover”
After a 35-year career teaching Mediterranean archaeology at the UvA, Marijke Gnade is retiring. Her position as associate professor of archaeology of pre-Roman cultures in central Italy will not be filled for the time being. Her excavation of ancient Satricum will be continued, but not at the UvA. “You can’t stop a project like that, of course.”
Last Wednesday afternoon, Professor Marijke Gnade (1956) delivered her farewell lecture, “The Pre-Roman Past,” in a well-attended auditorium of the UvA in the Old Lutheran Church. Fifteen years earlier, in the same church, she introduced the Volsken, the mountain people who lived in the Apennines before the Roman Empire. She made that discovery while excavating Satricum, an ancient settlement between Rome and Naples.
For more than 43 years, Gnade spent several months a year in Satricum. First as a student, then as a doctoral student and researcher, flanked by teams of students doing fieldwork there in the summer. With her appointment as endowed professor in 1990, the pre-Roman research direction at the UvA got a face, Gnade mentions in her lecture. That seems to have come to an end with her departure. “A sad situation,” says Gnade, “there is still so much to discover there.”
Nor will excavations at ancient Satricum continue at the UvA with Gnade’s departure. In 2019, the UvA eliminated funding for the excavation project. Gnade then sought and found funding from the Amsterdam University Fund, allowing the excavations to continue in recent years.
You have excavated a lot in your career in Satricum.
“Yes, that’s right. The reason that the excavations in Satricum were started had to do with large-scale agricultural activities in the 1970s that threatened large parts of the archaeological heritage in central Italy. The Italian archaeologists sounded the alarm and asked the then-Dutch Institute in Rome for help. The assignment was to save what could be saved. And we did. If we had not come, it would all have been gone. The situation is still precarious today as vineyards are increasingly being replaced by large kiwi plantations.”
What is so important about the excavations at Satricum?
“It is one of the best documented archaeological sites in Latium. Latium: A region in central Italy where Latins lived around a thousand years BCYou could say that the strength of these excavations is their continuity, the fact that we come back every year and discover new things. The long history of the place begins as early as the 9th century BC with the oldest huts. Then Satricum slowly becomes a city with everything that goes with it such as houses, lavishly decorated temples and an impressive road system. Next come the Volsks, one of the peoples who lived in the Apennine mountains. The Volsks have become my specialty within the pre-Roman era. They moved with their flocks to the plains and settled in Satricum. That was in the fifth and fourth centuries BC.”
“Then came the Romans, who incorporated the town into the Roman Empire. We discovered an imperial-era Roman villa of considerable size, which we have been working on for the past four years. Around the year 1,000 BC, a medieval community, probably Christians, buried its dead in the abandoned villa. By now we have recovered 70 skeletons. And then there are traces from World War II, such as bullets and provisions from the American invasion. The Americans presumably used the underground tunnels in the villa. In all, we have been digging in Satricum for 45 years. You can’t just stop a project like that, of course.”
Why did the UvA eliminate funding in 2019 in the first place?
“I think because of cutbacks. A choice had to be made between a number of projects. A small internal committee then favored other excavations in Greece. But the real reason never became clear to me. Our teaching was highly regarded by the students. Now that I am retiring, there is even less prospect of continuing the project at the UvA.”
In addition, your position as associate professor will not be filled at the UvA.
“Not for the time being, shall we say. My colleague Patricia Lulof who also specializes in the archaeology of pre-Roman Italy is also retiring. For the sake of continuity, you would then expect someone in our position to teach the students. And that won’t happen, which is a shame.”
Who will then teach the students at the UvA?
“That will then be another teacher with a specialty other than pre-Roman. It is increasingly the case - not only in humanities at the UvA but at universities all over Europe - that lecturers must teach other specialties as well. And that is unfortunate for small specialties. With that, pre-Roman is disappearing from the course as it is taught now. That's almost a thousand years of history all over Italy. But my biggest frustration is that the project in Satricum is not being continued at the UvA.”
So how will the project in Satricum be continued?
“I will continue it through the Royal Dutch Institute in Rome, where it once began. You need the authority of a scientific institute to apply for an annual permit from the ministry. I will take care of the funding myself. I also have a pretty good staff of people who are in commercial archaeology and can make themselves free during the summer months. Then there are “the workers”: local young people who are paid by the landowner. Plus, there is a group of former students, now archaeologists, who come back every summer. A lot is love and volunteer work, that’s what it boils down to.”
You are literally the linchpin of the Satricum project and were called the “queen of the Satricum” by your supervisor Herman Brijder. Can you pass on that title?
“I can. One also shouldn't be afraid to take their badge off. And, of course, I can’t stay in the field until I’m a hundred. I would like to transfer my practical and social knowledge and focus on publications. Then a younger generation can take over. There are also foreign universities interested in continuing the research. We are going to experiment with that for the first time this summer. Because of personal circumstances, I am withdrawing a little more and supervising from a distance.”
Would the UvA regret relinquishing the excavation in Satricum?
“I would put that as a question mark in the article. It is a shame, of course, if you are no longer supported for such a project by your own university. You expect a certain pride. It’s so many years of investment, and many hundreds of students have had their education here. It really is a well-oiled machine. We have a school, an interested local municipality, a museum, an estate owner who is extremely interested. And, the news of the day, very soon the Italian minister of culture is coming and they are going to see on the spot if Satricum can be declared a heritage site. If they can manage to get Satricum open to the public, I think that is of great importance.”
