Duke Diary Dispatch: Successful Last Days in Vulci

Graduate student Caitlin Childers collects data at ancient tomb, pyramid and temple

the team collecting data at an ancient dig site in Vulci, Italy

This is the latest diary entry by Caitlin Childers, a Duke graduate student studying digital art history at an archaeological dig site in Vulci, Italy. Read more diary entries in the Duke Today series.

We spent our last days at Vulci taking eye-tracking videos with the archaeology team on site. The team had finished their work on the dig site and covered it to protect it from the elements until next summer.

We were only able to collect data on the fisherman's domus site, and we're looking forward to seeing what differences may be visible between their gaze and the layperson's. This experiment was done without any use of visual thinking strategies, unlike the other experiments conducted on the fisherman's domus.

While waiting to do the eye-tracking with the archaeological team, we also transferred additional data collected from our Sapienza University teammates into our own workspace. This data was collected from tourists at the tomb of Caecilia Metella, Cestia Pyramid and the Temple of Minerva Medica.

Caitlin Childers author card

Caecilla Metella was the daughter of a Roman consul. The pyramid is a tomb for Gaius Cestius, a Roman senator and general. The Temple of Minerva Medica is an ancient temple on the Esquiline Hill.

Unlike the data collected with the archaeological team at Vulci, these sites were recorded using two groups separated by the use of visual thinking strategies.

After this work was done we spent our final night with our roommates on the terrace of our apartment. Our time together was spent eating entirely too much and enjoying each other's company, talking about the differences between Italian and American culture.

The next morning they accompanied us to Rome where we said our goodbyes and prepared to return home to Durham. The data collection team will be taking a break until the school year starts, at which point we look forward to continuing our work on interpreting our data.

Thank you all for taking the opportunity to stay updated on our work and thank you to Duke for giving us this opportunity!