Summer at Selinunte

Before the summer heat blanketed the ruins of Selinunte—an ancient Greek archaeological site located on the southwest coast of Sicily, Italy, Andrew Ward, PhD, and Maya Jackman ’27, were already in the trenches.

With the sound of tools scraping against ancient stone, the assistant professor of art history and visual culture and the art history major and ancient Mediterranean studies minor worked layer by layer with their team, uncovering the stories buried beneath the surface.

“Our dig moves carefully and meticulously,” said the Fairfield Meditz faculty member. “Even ancient trash, sacred or otherwise, can tell us a great deal about how people lived and worshipped in antiquity.”

Since 2013, Dr. Ward has guided students annually at this archaeological site in a long-term exploration of the city’s sacred heart, a sanctuary home to at least five temples. Over the years, the project has catalogued thousands of offerings, hundreds still in their original positions.

“Finds this year included dozens of iron weapons ritually ‘killed’ by bending and snapping, loom weights gifted to the goddesses from family looms, jewelry including a silver ring covered in gold, and a glass-glazed pot likely imported from far-away Egypt,” said Dr. Ward.

Each morning of the dig, Dr. Ward and Jackman made their way from the surrounding town of Marinella di Selinunte to the archaeological park. From 8 a.m. to noon, they rotated through a series of tasks in the trenches, digging, collecting soil buckets, and documenting their findings. The soil was sifted to ensure even the smallest artifacts like pottery shards, coins, and bones were recovered—each offering clues to the daily rhythms of the sanctuary and how it evolved through time.

“It’s really hard not to feel this sense of sacredness and importance within every object you find, whether it’s a fragment of a Greek vase or a piece of architecture,” said Jackman.

During the afternoons in the lab, the archaeological team cleaned and documented each morning’s finds under the supervision of conservators and specialists. “We are recovering the shared past of humanity one day at a time,” said Dr. Ward. “Students resonate with the idea that these buildings were built by someone, were used by someone, and were destroyed by someone. Understanding that is always powerful.”

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