UPbeat

News for and about University of Portland faculty and staff.

Fr. Richard Rutherford

News From Pollentia

president-meets-UP-team-rachael-EDIT-150x150An updated, final edition of the UP Pollentia Expedition blog, including a new About section, is available at https://wordpress.up.edu/pollentia. This project involves UP faculty Ray and Ronda Bard as well as Fr. Ron Wasowski, C.S.C., and Fr. Richard Rutherford, C.S.C. In addition, six volunteers, including alumni Rev. Larry Hansen, Alan Helyer, Rachael Thurston, family members Mary Hansen and Jacob Bard, and UP friend/benefactor Howard Rumjahn contributed expertise on the dig site in Mallorca as well as donations to support the project.

This year’s Pollentia Expedition is projected as Phase I of future expeditions to involve multidisciplinary student/faculty research projects in both CAS and professional schools. The expeditions current success has established a beachhead from which to expand to significant new, never-before-uncovered evidence of early Christianity in Roman Spain. “There is every reason to believe that UP can continue to head up this new Spanish endeavor,” says Fr. Rutherford, “surely a tribute to our beloved Kate Regan, who blessed the project with her endorsement and a CISGO seed grant.”

UP Team On Expedition To Ancient Roman City

pollenta-la-portella-colonnade copyFr. Richard Rutherford, C.S.C., emeritus theology, is leading a team of UP faculty, alumni, and supporters on an expedition to the old Roman city of Pollèntia near Alcúdia in Mallorca, Spain, this month. The UP team is working by invitation from the Consortium of the Roman City of Polléntia and in collaboration with Miguel Cao from the University of Barcelona. The team’s work includes mapping the farm site Ca’n Fanals, partially excavated in the 1920s and known to contain a necropolis dating to the Roman Republic and Christian antiquity; aerial photography of the Polléntia excavations and the buried necropolis; and confirmation of earlier excavations in Ca’n Fanals. A test excavation trench predicted to intersect previously mapped features shows great promise, as a known wall has already been uncovered. As the UP team heads home, Fr. Rutherford and colleagues are already planning to raise funds to take a team of students back to Pollèntia in Summer 2015. Find more information, including photos and day-to-day stories, at http://wordpress.up.edu/pollentia/.