A Dickey Center–supported excavation in southern Tuscany brings eight institutions and nine disciplines to one of the earliest documented Franciscan convents.
This summer, Art History professor Nick Camerlenghi and a team of Dartmouth students began excavating the Convento del Colombaio, a ruined convent in the hills of southern Tuscany. The site is among the earliest documented Franciscan houses, and both written sources and local oral tradition hold that it was given to Francis of Assisi during his lifetime. The work coincides with the 800th anniversary of Francis’s death.
The Dickey Center is committed to helping Dartmouth faculty conduct research beyond U.S. borders, and Camerlenghi’s project shows just what that kind of support can catalyze. Here, Dartmouth serves as lead institution for a team drawn from eight universities and research centers across three countries: the University of Nebraska (Lincoln), New York University, Cornell University, and Montana State University in the United States; the National Research Council and the Università degli Studi di Siena in Italy; and the Open University in the United Kingdom.
The disciplinary range is equally wide. Architects, archaeologists, botanists, digital surveyors, historians of architecture, and computer scientists are working alongside specialists in medieval pharmacology, ceramics, and agriculture. That breadth is not incidental to the research question but constitutive of it. As Camerlenghi describes the team’s aim, the goal is, “to recount the long history of the site and to recover how the Colombaio operated at the nexus of nature, culture, agriculture, and spirituality.” Reaching it, he notes, required the team to cross, “from the Humanities to the Social Sciences and Sciences.”
The deeper we dug, the more artifacts began appearing that help us to conclusively match its earliest phases to the thirteenth century.
nick Camerlenghi, associate professor and chair of art history
The first season has already begun to resolve the site’s chronology. Much of what stands above ground appears to date to the eighteenth century, but not what lies beneath it. “The deeper we dug,” Camerlenghi reports, “the more artifacts began appearing that help us to conclusively match its earliest phases to the thirteenth century.” Full findings are forthcoming in scholarly articles spanning the humanities and the sciences, alongside a public-facing website and social media presence intended to reach beyond the academy.
That public dimension reflects a deliberate commitment. The team is building the case for the Colombaio as a site meriting attention and conservation, from scholars, visitors, and above all from the people who live around it. In agreement with the Italian Ministry of Culture, Camerlenghi and his colleagues hold that long-term stewardship of the site belongs with the local community, and they plan to involve residents directly through community engagement during future seasonal campaigns.
International research of this kind depends on infrastructure that is easy to overlook: funding that arrives early enough to convene a team, institutional relationships that make foreign permits and partnerships possible, and the freedom for faculty to pursue questions that don’t fit neatly inside a single department. Facilitating such work is central to the Dickey Center’s mission.
Learn more about the Dickey Center’s support for Dartmouth faculty international research and travel here.
(Photo: Sophia Scull ’25)
