My research as Hugh Last Fellow focused on archaeology in northern Tuscany and Emilia Romagna from the Late Bronze Age to the Etruscan period (c. 1200–400 bce). Specifically, I am preparing a revisionist account of the cultural, social, economic and historical development of northern Etruria, and its relationship to the Po valley across the Apennine mountains. The current consensus is that the Po valley was colonized from Etruria, with two main phases of settlement in the Early Iron Age and the early Archaic period. This reconstruction is now becoming undermined by recent fieldwork in the under-explored area between Florence and Bologna, for example at Poggio Colla near Vicchio in the Mugello valley, where I have been excavating and studying material culture with the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project, led by P. Gregory Warden.

During my three-month fellowship, I carried out an extensive review of archaeological publications from northern Tuscany and southern Emilia Romagna in the library of the British School at Rome, to contextualize the material from Poggio Colla. This desk research was supplemented by visits to museums in Frattesina, Ferrarra, Castenaso di Villanova, Bologna, Modena, Reggio nell'Emilia and Parma in the Po valley. In Tuscany, I visited collections in Orvieto, Cetona, Florence and Fiesole, where I was fortunate to be allowed access to unpublished material from excavations with finds similar to those at Poggio Colla. This survey has provided me with the basis for reassessing relations across the Apennines, seen in material culture and settlements, which challenge traditional interpretations of the archaeology of these neighbouring areas.

While in Rome, the first details emerged of the reading of the important Orientalizing period stele found at Vicchio in the 2015 excavation season at Poggio Colla. This inscription appears to be a series of ritual instructions for cult practice at a sanctuary of Tinia and Uni (Roman Jupiter and Juno). The presence of such an important religious site at Poggio Colla was unexpected, and my work on understanding its broader, regional and interregional, context led to a study of the stele in its archaeological context presented at the conference, The Orientalizing Cultures in the Mediterranean, Eighth–Sixth Centuries bc , held in January 2017 at the BSR, the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut and the École Française de Rome.

Taking advantage of the unique research environment of the BSR, I learnt that seventeenth-century ce documents had become available in the Archivio Comunale di Roma related to excavations of the Villa Pigneto Sacchetti, designed by Pietro da Cortona, previously published in Papers of the British School at Rome (volumes 68 and 77) by Sally Schafer and myself. The BSR arranged access to the archive, and I was able to read an unpublished selection of letters, accounts and documents relating to the land transactions and contents of the villa in the mid-seventeenth century. The documents did not reveal any new information to revise the architectural history published in PBSR, but they do provide insights into economic aspects of the development of the property, financial arrangements and material culture.