Isidoro Falchi

Isidoro Falchi

Isidoro Falchi (born April 26, 1838 in Montopoli in Val d'Arno ( province of Pisa ), † April 30, 1914 ibid) was an Italian doctor who became known in Tuscany for his autodidactic archaeological research. His life's achievement from 1880 until his death was the discovery of the lost Etruscan city of Vetulonia under the medieval borgo Colonna di Buriano in the province of Grosseto . He also gave the first impetus to excavate the Etruscan necropolis near Populonia in 1897–1903.

Life

Isidoro Falchi was the second youngest of 17 children in a family from Montopoli in Val d'Arno. After finishing school in San Miniato , he studied medicine at the University of Pisa and received his doctorate in this subject in 1859.

He had already joined the Risorgimento movement two years earlier ; In 1860 he followed the volunteer troops under V. Malenchini to Palermo to reinforce the train of the thousand . In Caltanissetta he worked as an assistant doctor, but then fell ill himself and returned to Tuscany.

From 1862 to 1871 he was a doctor in the municipality of Campiglia Marittima ; after that he settled in his native city until his death. He married twice and had two children.

In addition to his job, he performed various voluntary tasks at the community as secretary of the local savings bank, school inspector, member of the Società di mutuo soccorso on site (an organization similar to the German workers' welfare in Italy) and as an assistant in various offices. In the course of this church work he began to be interested in archeology in the 1870s. When looking after restitution claims for pasture and forest land, he had access to the archives, where he came across notes from the population about excavations.

Vetulonia project

Ruins of Etruscan atrium houses

Tumulus "little devil 2"

In 1880 Isidoro Falchi first came to Colonna di Buriano in the province of Grosseto in connection with a professional assignment . When he investigated information from farmers about weapons, coins and jewelry finds, the idea settled in him that there must be an ancient city under the medieval borgo . Based on the inscription VATL on the coins and the evaluation of a source from 1181 about the Poggio di Vitulonia , he first formulated the hypothesis in two publications published in 1880 and 1881 that the Etruscan Vetulonia , which archaeologists had been looking for for decades in the entire Maremma , was below this Hill. But it was not until 1884 that he received an excavation permit from the authorities in Florence.

• In 1892 Falchi was the first to discover the two burial chambers of the Tomba della Pietrera .
• In 1893 he identified the ruins of the atrium houses on the hill in the center of the settlement ( Via dei Ciclopi ).
• In 1895 he found the relics of an approximately five meter long city wall ( Cyclops wall ), the function of which as a defensive wall and / or retaining wall has not been conclusively clarified.
• In 1897 Falchi's team exposed the Tomba di Belvedere .
• In 1903 he found the central burial chamber of the Tomba del Diavolino 2 ("Devil 2"), a large tumulus .

At approximately one-year reporting intervals, Falchi promptly recorded the progress of his work in short essays. He mostly published in the journal Anmerkungie degli Scavi di Antichità , but the communications of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome also published his findings in 1886. Some of Falchi's notes are still in the archives. However, the evidence collected in the Museo Topografico Centrale dell'Etruria in Florence was almost completely destroyed during the Arno flood in 1966.

At first, experts did not want to recognize the layperson's ascription. Previous studies had suggested that Vetulonia must have been near the sea. The prevailing doctrine, represented by C. Dotto dei Dauli, A. Malfatti, CA de Cara and G. Sordini, had assumed that the Etruscan Twelve- City League town was on the hill of Poggio Castiglione near Massa Marittima . It had not been taken into account that the location of Colonna di Buriano did not conflict with this, since the great salt lake Lacus Prilius , which covered the Maremma in antiquity, must have been navigable and had access to the sea.

As early as July 22, 1887, Falchi's attribution was recognized by the municipality and the town of Colonna di Buriano was given its ancient name back by a regional decree. The acceptance by the professional world initially lagged behind this step; numerous pamphlets have been exchanged and published between the established archaeologists and Falchi. In 1893 an arbitration commission was set up by the responsible ministry, which recognized Falchi's identification. On June 3, 1894, he was awarded the Academy Prize of the Archaeological Faculty in Florence. At the same time he was named Ispettore degli scavi monumentali by the Etruscan Museum of this city .

Since the 1990s, the interest in the person of the discoverer has been revitalized - also in the course of the documentary processing of the archaeological sites. To mark the 100th anniversary of his scientific honor, an exhibition in his hometown with Etruscan finds from the graves of Vetulonia was dedicated to him from autumn 1994 to spring 1995. The same exhibition was shown in 1995 in Campiglia Marittima and provided with a catalog. The Archaeological Museum in Vetulonia has been named after Isidoro Falchi since 2000.

Falchi's unorthodox excavation methods, imprecise documentation and the popular scientific language of his publications have been criticized by experts to this day. On the other hand, critics also recognize that all knowledge that exists today about the Etruscan Vetulonia goes back to Falchi's foundations.

Baratti / Populonia project

In 1897 Falchi came across a burial chamber vaulted with sandstone blocks near an old farmhouse in the hamlet of San Cerbone on the Gulf of Baratti . In the same year he began systematic excavation work. Over the next few months, more graves near Populonia came to light under a layer of iron slag, which documents the Etruscan know-how in metalworking, which - as it later turned out - was centered in this settlement. The residents obtained the ores from the Colline Metallifere .

In the meantime, the landowner forbade Falchi excavation work, which he was able to resume in November 1903 after consulting the Archaeological Museum in Florence. During his further explorations, he discovered a number of valuable grave goods, including two elaborate gold-plated vases.

Falchi's initiative gave the impetus to the discovery of the large necropolis that now constitutes the Parco Archeologico di Baratti e Populonia . Over most of the graves, however, the iron slag layer was over 7 m thick; these were only removed after the First World War , when two steelworks were interested in the material. This explains why most of the graves were only discovered between 1920 and 1957. At this point in time, Falchi had already died and only one of his publications was devoted to Populonia.

Fonts (selection)

• Trattenimenti populari sulla storia della Maremma . Prato 1880 (first thoughts).
• Ricerche di Vetulonia . Prato 1881.
• Scavi di Vetulonia. In: Communications of the German Archaeological Institute , Roman Department. Volume 1, 1886, p. 243 f.
• Vetulonia. In: Note degli Scavi di Antichità. Born in 1887.
• Vetulonia e la sua necropoli antichissima. Florence 1891.
• Nuovi scavi nella necropoli vetuloniese. In: Note degli Scavi di Antichità. Year 1892, p. 381.
• Vetulonia solennemente giudicata a Vetulonia. Florence 1894.

literature

• Filippo Delpino:  FALCHI, Isidoro. In: Fiorella Bartoccini (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 44:  Fabron-Farina. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1994.
• Stefano Bruni (Ed.): Isidoro Falchi. Un medico al servizio dell'archeologia, un protagonista della ricerca italiana di fine Ottocento. Campiglia Marittima, Mostra 1995 (catalog of the exhibition of the same name in Palazzo Pretorio, March 14 to October 15, 1995).

Movie

• The message of the 12th Etruscan city. Documentary, Germany, 2009, 43:32 min., Written and directed by Andreas Sawall, first broadcast: April 4, 2010, production: Spiegel TV / ZDF , series: ZDF Expedition , summary by arte .