Author: Becky Dorsey

On June 13 we attended a one-day field trip with a group of Italian sedimentologists going by the name “GeoSed”, to view Cretaceous and Miocene sedimentary rocks exposed near the crest of the southern Apennine orogenic belt. It was a gorgeous sunny day, I learned a lot and the company was great! Charlie and Sergio struck some memorable poses (see below).  We saw a thick section of Cretaceous marine deposits that were overturned by strong back-thrusting and folding near the crest of the Apennine orogen, and wound up with overturned bedding dips of 30-40° to the NE. We ended the day on a walk through the quaint town of Pietrapertosa, just another gorgeous Italian hilltop ancient stone city.  Photos below.

Above: Charlie and Sergio enjoying the day.

Above: field trip leaders doing what field trip leaders do.

Hey sedimentologists, these turbidites are up-side-down!

Above: Miocene Gorgoglioni Flysch, amalgamated sandy channel-fill turbidite complex.

The boys looking good!

Above: Nice exposures in the hill top town of Pietrapertosa.

Above: Roadside cafe built into channel sandstone with rip-up clasts!

We are finding that the Italian people really love their history and holidays. Recently Potenza hosted a 3-day festival in honor of San Gerardo, the revered patron saint of Potenza. This festival celebrates an event in the year 1111 when San Gerardo is said to have used a magical force of light to repel an attack on Potenza by intruders commonly described as “Turks”. Some myths say that the attackers were actually Saracens from the Syrian or Arabian desert, and other accounts assert that the fighting took place in Germany and the story was translated to southern Italy for religious or political reasons. Regardless of such details, the people of Potenza go all-in on this celebration which included days of singing and partying in the streets, and culminated with the very popular Parade of the Turks. Photos below provide a sample of the energy and color of this event.

Last weekend we took the train to the city of Salerno where we stayed in the Palazzo Conforti, an old palace built at the end of the 18th century. Our room was grand, with a view of the harbor and a classic colorful painting that covered the ceiling! We visited an old church where a Catholic service featured choral singing and gorgeous organ music. Next day we took the ferry to Positano on the Amalfi Coast, which is really just a mind blower. Small towns and villages climb up sheer cliffs of limestone that are incised by vertical deep gorges, looks like it must be an actively uplifting peninsula. And I swam in the Tyrrhenian Sea! On Day 3 we visited the ancient Greek city of Poseidonia (Paestum) which flourished between ~ 550 to 450 BC, with large temples to Athena, Neptune and Hera. I learned that in the 5th century BC, the Greeks employed the local people, known as Italics or Lucanians, as mercenaries to fight wars for them. However, in the 4th century BC the Italic people took over the city and they became the ruling class. Later the Romans moved in, and the city prospered during the early years of the Roman Empire. Finally, silting up of the mouth of the Silarus River created a malarial swamp and Paestum was deserted after being sacked by Muslim raiders in AD 871. A few photos below.

The long-awaited Tidalites Conference was a huge success due to the immense efforts and dedication of lead organizer Sergio Longhitano, the Tidalites Organizing Committee, and a team of energetic talented student workers. The meeting was held in person with some virtual contributions, marking a great accomplishment in a world with COVID. Everyone was super happy to get out of zoom and back into the real world. The venue was in the beautiful ancient city of Matera, southern Italy. There were about 80 participants and the presentations were excellent, so it had a nice international small-meeting vibe where I was able to learn a lot and meet lots of people. Charlie attended all the sessions and continued growing his knowledge of geology. Kevin Gardner traveled here from Oregon and won an Early Career Researcher award for his poster on quantitative analysis of fluvial and tidal channel planform geometries. I gave an oral presentation in which we proposed that seismically active normal faults and interacting fault tips in a migrating conjugate relay zone exert a direct control on morphology, bathymetry, and tidally influenced transport processes in the modern Messina Strait.

The Gala Dinner on the last night was a festive event held in an amazing cave carved in Pliocene calcarenite with large-scale cross bedding. I met long-time geo hero, Albina Colella, whose papers on Gilbert deltas inspired me back in the 1990’s. She is a great scientist and a truly delightful person. Afterwards we went on another field trip, to the paleo-Siderno strait, co-led by Sergio and a new friend and colleague Valentina Rossi. They did a fabulous job and introduced me to more aspects of sedimentation and tectonics in Calabria. Now we are back in Potenza recovering from the excitement, planning future research projects, and getting ready for more adventures!

Today we saw tall cliffs of dune cross-bedding in mixed bioclastic-siliciclastic deposits of Pleistocene tidal facies (which are shockingly similar to the Bouse Formation), beautiful trace fossils (burrows), and a gorgeous sunset looking across the southern Messina Strait at Mt Etna which appeared to have a little puff of gas or smoke emerging from the summit. All in all it was another specular day with a most engaged and energetic group of earth scientists. Photos below.  Tomorrow we will head to Matera!

Today was our first look at Homer’s Messina Strait, and … wow! From tidal rip currents forming whirlpools as we looked across from Scylla at Charybdis, to spectacular growth strata in uplifted and tilted Pleistocene deposits, to an evening walk on the beach in the shadow of the looming Etna volcano after a full day with a fantastic group of scientists from around the globe, we couldn’t have asked for a better introduction to this geological wonderland. Our field trip leaders, Domenico Chiarella and Marcello Gugliotta, are teaching us about their expert work in this area. Sergio Longhitano is also a trip leader but had to stay in Matera to make final preparations for the Tidalites conference. Looking forward to more adventures tomorrow!

In anticipation of our upcoming trip to the Tidalites Conference, Charlie and I decided to spiff up and get hair cuts!  The photo below was taken today at a small plaza near our apartment in Potenza. The skies are blue and the weather is warming up!

Day 2 in Matera was sunnier than Day 1 and equally full of sights and discoveries. We walked around and about, up and down, in and out of the seemingly endless stone streets of this amazing ancient city.  One museum display said that Matera has been continuously inhabited for the past 4,000 years, which makes it a lot older than Eugene, Oregon!  We walked down into the deep river gorge next to the cliff-top city, crossed a shaky suspension footbridge crammed full of Italian tourists, and hiked up the other side for a bit of exercise and more stunning views.

We are now back in Potenza, working on our various projects. Happy to say that we will return to Matera in 10 days for the Tidalites Conference!

Charlie and I spent Easter weekend in the historic city of Matera in southern Italy. This is a stunning place – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – with so many fascinating stone streets, buildings, churches, and spectacular vistas to explore. Matera is famous for its restored network of cave dwellings that were inhabited until the 1950’s. Two photos below.  It is also a popular tourist town with mainly Italian people as well as tourists from different countries. Something we were not expecting: raucous fireworks at midnight to start the Easter celebration!

There are a couple of produce stands located on a street at the top of the stone stairs that take me down to campus every day. We like to shop at both of them. Yesterday we bought broccoli, asparagus, carrots, pears, apples and more. Last night I tossed a bunch of veggies into a large hot pan with olive oil, Italian pesto and salty dried tomatoes and created a typical (for us) dinner.  As recorded in photos below. Buon appetito!