The Herculaneum Society is pleased to announce two outstanding summer schools at Herculaneum for university students and adult learners. The schools will be operated by Dr Christian Biggi, Director of BIG Heritage Consultancy, with the assistance of by Dr Joanne Berry, author ofThe Complete Pompeii. You will be taught by a team with many years' experience in operating schools, and who have been closely involved in major initiatives in Vesuvian archaeology. You will stay in a luxurious 4* hotel in Ercolano, with easy access to the Herculaneum excavations. Appearances by guest specialists in archaeology and history add an extra dimension. On this year's courses, provisional guests include Dr Dirk Obbink of Oxford University, world-renowned papyrologist and trustee of the Herculaneum Society, and Professor Christopher Smith, Director of the British School at Rome.
The Society can offer up to four scholarships of £500 (€650) each to deserving students currently registered on an undergraduate or postgraduate programme. In addition, there are two free places on each course (numbers permitting) for accompanying staff to help with oversight of students. Please enquire with the Society if you are interested in taking this task on (herculaneum@classics.ox.ac.uk).
For full details of programme and registration procedures, please clickhere. You can register as an individual, or a group. In the latter case, please contact the Society as soon as possible (herculaneum@classics.ox.ac.uk) .
Steven Ellis' thoughtful, thorough and above all genuinely engaging and enthusiastic review of Andrew Wallace-Hadrill's book Herculaneum: Past and Future.
Two radio interviews with Andrew Wallace-Hadrill on Herculaneum, the Herculaneum Conservation Project and the challenges of conserving the Vesuvian sites. Both are available online as podcasts.
Interview in Italian for the programme Zazà (Radio Rai 2)
Interview in English for the programme Prof Talk (University of British Columbia radio)
Volume 24 of the Journal of Roman Archaeology has just been issued and includes an article by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill on: 'The monumental centre of Herculaneum: in search of the identities of the public buildings'.
Herculaneum: ashes to ashes
Friday 4 November, 18.30
British Museum, BP Lecture Theatre
In AD 79 Mount Vesuvius erupted and destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, formerly the Director of the British School at Rome and now Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, discusses his recent publication which gives a definitive overview of what we know and understand about Herculaneum, of what is still unknown and mysterious, and of the potential for future discoveries in both archaeological and political contexts.
Herculaneum: Past and Future is published in association with the Packard Humanities Institute.
If you happen to be online now and in Kings Lynn (!!), you might be interested in this event featuring Andrew Wallace-Hadrill on Pompeii and Herculaneum.
For anyone who reads this in time, today's edition of Newshour on the BBC World Service will include an interview with Andrew Wallace-Hadrill on Herculaneum's sewer and the Herculaneum Conservation Project. The programme is on at 13.00 GMT and will probably be on streaming afterwards.
Listen live by clicking here.
Last week I was lucky enough to go to two workshops: one at the British Museum which brought together a bunch of scholars to talk about recent work at both Pompeii and Herculaneum, and the other at Cambridge which presented the results of the Herculaneum Conservation Project.
We’ve had a whole series of posts about Herculaneum in the last month, mostly related to the recent publication of AWH’s new book on the site. On Tuesday evening John Nicoll, the director of Frances Lincoln (the publisher of Herculaneum), told me (and I hope he doesn’t mind me repeating this) that in the two weeks since AWH’s book came out, a phenomenal 1400 copies have been sold. This clearly reflects a thirst for knowledge about this ancient site, which hopefully will now start to receive as much popular, and scholarly, attention as Pompeii. So, what really struck me first of all about the papers given at the two workshops is that there is still so much more research to be published. AWH’s book is merely the start. (Incidentally, last week I received a copy of Nicolas Monteix’s new book, Les Lieux de Métier. Boutiques et ateliers d’Herculanum, which looks really interesting – and if anyone would like to review it for Blogging Pompeii, or lead a discussion about it, they should contact me).
The second thing that – although not new – was brought home forcefully was the conservation context of the recent work at Herculaneum. The startling archaeological discoveries of the past few years (the boat on the shore, the lower stories of the House of the Telephus Relief, the wooden roof, the head of theAmazon, the wooden tripod, the dionysiac relief, and the organic and non-organic finds in the sewer beneath Cardo V) are the result of a truly multi-disciplinary project involving archaeologists, conservators, engineers, architects, GIS specialists and so on. For example, if the project engineer hadn’t been worried about the ability of the House of the Telephus Relief to support a new roof, the lower stories of this insula would not have been uncovered by archaeologists who dug a trench to examine the strength of the foundations. A further knock on effect of the discovery of these lower stories was that they provided evidence for dramatic changes of sea level in the last 100 years of the town’s life. Is this isn’t an argument for prioritising conservation on an archaeological site, I don’t know what is.
You can tell I enjoyed myself! All the papers were fascinating (and there were some great papers about Pompeii too). My only regret is that these weren’t bigger events. Herculaneum, and the work of the HCP in particular, deserves a bigger audience.
The programme of the Cambridge workshop can be viewed here. If anyone would like to see the British Museum programme they should email me and I will send it along.
(For the introduction to this series of posts about Herculaneum Past and Future, see here)
Posted on behalf of Jeremy Hartnett (who is currently enjoying himself in Rome!):
Herculaneum’s Public Buildings
In Chapter 6, “The Public Face of the Town,” Wallace-Hadrill offers an overview of the principal civic buildings excavated at Herculaneum. In this entry, I won’t summarize his discussion of each of these, partly because doing so would essentially amount to copying verbatim the already crisp prose. I would like to highlight, however, a few compelling suggestions and offer a reaction.
After a survey of Herculaneum’s baths, the seaside collection of temples, and the Palestra, the chapter turns to the three public buildings situated on the Decumanus Maximus. The Basilica Noniana, which the Herculaneum Conservation Project has explored as part of a program of cleaning, continues to bring interesting material to light. Bases of statues have emerged; they almost certainly hosted portraits of Balbus’ family that were taken during the Bourbon tunneling and are now in the Naples museum. Also recently uncovered are two marble slabs with faint traces of painted or inked names. These may have been part of temporary complements to the incised lists (probably of the city’s citizens, it now seems) that Maiuri found in front of this building.
Across Cardo III is a building identified almost since its discovery in the 1960’s as the Collegium of the Augustales. The basis for the identification has been an inscription recording a dedication to Augustus (of what we don’t know) and the celebration of the occasion with a meal for the dedicators, the decuriones, and the Augustales. Wallace-Hadrill is the latest to call into question the building’s association with the Augustales, pointing out that the inscription would fit well on a statue base (and therefore not refer to the dedication of the building as a whole, as some would have it). An archival photo of the inscription at its moment of discovery, reprinted here, strengthens his case: it was discovered “floating” in the volcanic material some meters above the building’s floor. There’s a strong possibility that it was carried from somewhere uphill and deposited here. Graffiti carved into the building’s columns refer to it as the curia Augustana (or Augustiana), and make a reasonable case that this was the Curia.
Wallace-Hadrill employs another inscription, long known but rarely considered, to suggest possible uses for the two idiosyncratic spaces flanking this edifice’s entrance. It records the construction of a “pondera, a schola, and a chalchidicum.” The last of these might be the arcade connecting the Collegium/Curia to the building I will next discuss, which leaves the other two functions to fill the well-decorated room on the east and the columned space to the west. Intriguing.
The last of this group of public buildings, located across the Decumanus from the Basilica and the Collegium/Curia, has endured a whole host of identifications over the nearly three centuries since its discovery. Rich with statues, paintings, and other decoration, the structure takes the architectural form of a porticus, but otherwise defies easy categorization. Wallace-Hadrill notes that it was certainly a meeting point for citizens, and suggests that early scholars perhaps weren’t very far off the mark when they called it a forum. If the space started that way, he writes, it was perhaps monumentalized as a porticus at a later date.
All in all, with this conglomeration of public buildings, we’re clearly on the edge of the city’s center if not, as Wallace-Hadrill intimates, at its very heart. La Vega’s plan located the forum further to the west, and eighteenth-century documents may do the same. Let’s hope that the HCP’s exploration of the Bourbon tunnels turns up something conclusive.
Wallace-Hadrill ends the chapter with an appropriate summary: “…imperial Herculaneum, though small, was disproportionately well-endowed.” On the one hand, the last bit of his sentence is beyond question. At this site, a marvelous array of public buildings has been discovered at one time or another, though many of them still lurk around the perimeter of the excavated area, half-hidden at best. The Palestra alone, as Wallace-Hadrill demonstrates in this chapter and a later one, is a splendid, large, and sophisticated building, whose further study will shed light on the development of mixed-use insula-style structures in Italy. (If, in its work on the sewer that ran beneath the Palestra, the HCP can isolate which refuse came from which latrine, then the results could be especially illuminating.)
On the other hand, in reading this chapter, the wealth of public buildings leads me to question Herculaneum’s perceived size. James will address, I believe, Wallace-Hadrill‘s discussion of the city plan; essentially, Herculaneum is imagined as a fairly small conurbation. Yet here are already a host of substantial public buildings, and the book reminds us of epigraphic evidence for several more: a Capitolium, a macellum (both of which we would suspect around a forum), a temple of the mother of the gods, and likely also a temple of Hercules, the city’s eponymous founder.
No one will dispute that Herculaneum was smaller than Pompeii, but how much of our image of a miniscule Herculaneum is the product of the limited facts on the ground and of a long-standing tradition (undoubtedly a result of the small area thus far excavated) of seeing here a sleepy, quiet neighbor of a famous cousin down the road? We might remember that open-air excavations have only revealed one route through the city, itself a very roundabout passage along the Decumanus Inferiore and Cardo V. Herculaneum’s main artery (or arteries), which may have linked Naples and Pompeii, likely lurks uphill under the modern town. One candidate was found by Karl Weber in 1754, and it may be here that additional public buildings clustered here, perhaps around the city’s forum. My point is that, rich as the site already is, we may be looking at a relatively quiet corner of what was a larger and more vibrant city.
(For the introduction to this series of posts about Herculaneum Past and Future, see here)
Posted on behalf of Ia McIlwaine:
The Villa of the Papyri
The Villa of the Papyri provides a microcosm of all the various aspects of Herculaneum. It features in the history of the excavations and the literature advocating further excavation, both recent and historical. It is noted with interest in the writings of 18th and 19th century travellers and was a major cultural influence in the Neoclassic movement. The eponymous papyri have generated a great deal of literature, they figure in the early travel accounts of visitors and in the contributions to the Philosophical Proceedings of the Royal Society in the 18th century and were the cause for a Royal Commission at the time when Britain was embroiled in the Napoleonic Wars. But the art is also of major importance, both sculpture and painting, mirrored in numerous “Pompeian rooms” across Europe.
This last facet is well brought out in AWH’s book, and enhanced by the excellent illustrations which are a major feature of the publication. A particular bonus is the treatment of paintings and sculpture discovered in the excavations of the past ten years or so. The principal section on the Villa is in the chapter on “The town and its setting” but a glance at the index under “Houses” demonstrates the all-pervading interest that the house provides. AWH rightly states that a full understanding of the Villa and its relationship to the city will not be reached until the site has been properly excavated, a goal that the late Marcello Gigante, who in 1969 established the Centro Internazionale per i Papiri Ercolanesi and lobbied tirelessly for a proper excavation, held close to his heart. He also established the “learned journal” referred to on p. 114, Cronache ercolanesi, which though largely devoted to editions of papyri always carried at least one other article on a different aspect of the Villa.
In his examination of the ownership of the Villa which has been much discussed in the literature on the subject AWH follows the usual attribution of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, with the proviso that the evidence is circumstantial not documentary and the valid point is made that it neither a town nor a country residence but rather a “Mouseion”, a fact that is mirrored in the reproduction designed for J. Paul Getty at Malibu to contain his collection of antiquities. The Villa housed a collection of statues and other works of art as well as a library and differs in this respect from other villas such as the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii or the Villa of Arianna at Stabiae.
The original excavation undertaken in the Bourbon period was carried out by Carl Weber who recorded the finds meticulously and drew the much reproduced plan of the Villa. Work in the present era has been considerably hampered by the practice of the Bourbons to tunnel and retrieve works of art, ignoring the structure of the building that they were exploring and creating a network that destroyed much that lay in the path of the treasure seekers. The Bourbon tunnellers left some items behind for the later generation to find, especially wall paintings and decorated ceilings shown in the photograph of the recently excavated room on the lower terrace of the villa on pp. 116/117. Items that they unearthed were not always identified initially, for example the papyrus rolls were originally thought to be blocks of wood and writing on them was discovered accidentally. This led eventually to the invention of Piaggio’s unrolling machine, still in evidence in the Centro and until modern times not superseded as a method of unravelling their contents.
The geographical features (or lack of them) present another mystery. Cornelius Sisenna when writing about the Social War, refers to Herculaneum as a ‘town on a steep rise by the sea, with little walls, between two rivers beneath Vesuvius’. AWH explores this in relation to what has been revealed in the most recent excavations. He relates the finds to the Bourbon records and identifies two possible locations. One river he suggests ran down to the East of the Palaestra and the harbour was probably located in the area where the new ticket office is located. The second one he suggests lay between the Western insulae and the Villa of the Papyri where there is “a sort of blank” without any ancient buildings. This would make sense, as the Villa must have been located outside the main town, styled as it is more in the manner of a country villa. There is, however, now no sign of the river, as is clearly demonstrated in the illustration of the excavation trench leading to the Villa and the conservation work and protective covers put up in 2009. [p.106].
The discoveries of the recent past provide a tantalising glimpse of what may yet remain. No further papyri have come to light, though the hope of discovering the “lost books of Livy” expressed by Charles Waldstein in 1904 remains a much discussed prospect. The problems of new excavation versus conservation of what has already been discovered and the cost of each remain a vexed question. The Herculaneum Conservation Project has managed to achieve a happy medium but future funding and the over-riding problems of the modern town over part of the site of the ancient city present major difficulties. Above all, the volcano looms and there is always the possibility of another eruption which cannot be ignored.
(For the introduction to this series of posts about Herculaneum Past and Future, see here.)
The new findings revealed by AWH regarding the early history, site and development of Herculaneum contribute hugely to our understanding of the town’s earliest years and thus make this book essential reading, not just for those interested in Pompeian archaeology, but for anyone interested in Roman urbanisation in general. This post focuses on the parts of the book that deal with this subject, primarily to be found in the fourth chapter of the book (‘The town and its setting’). In this chapter AWH explores the scanty evidence furnished by the literary sources which is set against and contextualised by a number of important recent discoveries made thanks to the work of the Herculaneum Conservation Project (HCP).
The early development of Herculaneum has, to date, been difficult to perceive. This is primarily due to the significant redevelopment of the town from the Imperial period that has hidden the earlier remains but is also due to a lack of stratigraphic investigation of the kind that Pompeii has been subjected to over the last decade and a half. Such attention at Herculaneum, I think, has been long-overdue and although we are far from fully understanding the earliest phases of the town, AWH and the work of the HCP have taken several strides in the right direction.
Dionysus of Halicarnassus attributes the founding of the town to Hercules, claiming that the demi-god anchored his fleet at this spot as it afforded ‘safe moorings in all seasons.’ For AWH the connection with Hercules implies very early origins for Herculaneum and that we should consider the arrival of the Greeks in the 8th century BC on Ischia and subsequent inhabitation of the northern part of the Bay of Naples as significant in this regard. Yet Strabo makes no mention of Herculaneum ever being under Greek control, instead telling us that Herculaneum was held by the Oscans, Etruscans, Samnites and then Romans. AWH suggests this omission was probably deliberate but does not define why this is so. He claims that the foundation myth is a sure sign of the town’s Greek origins and suggests there was a conspiracy of silence regarding this in the literary sources. Dionysus of Halicarnassus is, in fact, the only source for the Hercules foundation myth, although Martial did make reference to the Hercules link in the name of the town after the eruption. Other authors, writing long after the Romanisation of the town, have no greater authority on this matter. Ultimately, the lack of any archaeological or epigraphical evidence of Greek foundation renders any much later literary interpretation unreliable as a sole source for foundation. AWH does make the point, however, that any Greek settlement at the site must have pre-dated Oscan control as Etruscan-Oscan settlement to the southeast (at Pompeii and other cities) had been a response to the presence of the Greeks in the area. The site of Herculaneum, although close to Neapolis (10km to the city centre) was located at the fringe of early Greek settlement on the Bay of Naples and at that time would have been in close proximity with Etruscan-Oscan territory, with which relations were at times hostile. If Herculaneum did have a Greek origin then I think we should consequently envisage a complex history where the early settlement changed hands several times.
Unfortunately, the archaeological evidence from Herculaneum does not provide dateable material from this far back to confirm the presence of such an early settlement; the earliest masonry buildings appear to belong to the 2nd century BC. It might simply be the case that any early settlement lies elsewhere and not under this part of the town. I agree with AWH that we have to instead look to the town plan, which is probably the best indicator of the earliest origins of the town. The grid plan is believed to have probably post-dated that of nearby Neapolis (founded in the 5th century BC) although the insulae are proportioned more like other cities of Italic origin. Indeed, one recent study argues that the arrangement of the insulae followed the Oscan foot. A possible date of the 4th century BC for the grid plan has been suggested on the evidence of small test trenches (although future stratigraphic investigation might provide more definitive information), This date belongs to the Samnite phase of Herculaneum, at which time the inhabitants appear to have been largely Oscan-speaking. Interestingly, recent cleaning of the shoreline conducted by the Herculaneum Conservation Project has revealed evidence of quarrying of the natural underlying tuff creating a cliff face on which the town walls were set, thus making it more defensible. AWH states that this work ‘provided the alignment on which the road system was based’ and that the setting out of the streets occurred at the same time. Further details on the nature of the quarrying are hopefully forthcoming (I wonder how the quarried tuff was used given it was little used in wall construction at Herculaneum and when one considers just how much of it must have actually been removed), but this new evidence makes clear that the Herculaneum we see today was initially intended to be highly defensible, consistent with the fortified town described in the accounts of Strabo and L. Cornelius Sisenna.
AWH also provides new information on recent geological findings (core samples) that throw further light on Herculaneum’s topography. These findings, supported by a test trench along a street to the north of the House of the Telephus Relief indicates that originally the land beneath the Palestra and this house had dropped steeply away to the south, consistent with Strabo’s account that the town had been situated on a spit of land. However, in the imperial period this area was subject to massive artificial terracing in order to build the Palaestra and the House of the Telephus Relief, which were also on a different alignment to the grid plan (although it should be noted that oldest parts of the House of the Telephus Relief was actually on the same alignment as the rest of the town, only the peristyle and southern multi-storey of the house part belonging to the later works were aligned differently). This project was very probably related to the works on the basilica, city walls and gates undertaken by Marcus Nonius Balbus (CIL X 1425) and must have entailed considerable expense; we are told this was out of Balbus’ own pocket.
On the evidence of the escarpment to the southeast and a high sea level in the final years of the town (of which more below), AWH believes that the harbour as mentioned in relation to Hercules must have lain just beyond the house of the Telephus Relief, an assertion repeated frequently throughout the book. Only further samples taken to the southeast of the Palaestra will confirm if a ‘harbour’ did indeed exist in this area. But perhaps we should not be looking for a formalised harbour as such and rather a sheltered bay as in the reconstruction offered in the book? Shelter could presumably have been simply provided by the natural headland on which the Casa del Rilievo di Telefo was apparently located. Further core samples might also provide evidence of the eastern limit of the town and one of the rivers that L. Cornelius Sisenna indicated flanked it. The same applies to the river on the western side of the town, which AWH suggests may have reached the sea in a space devoid of buildings between the Villa of the Papiri and the south-western corner of the town (Insula I), identified during the excavations of the 1990s. Here further excavation is at least possible and might reveal whether the river was indeed here.
Of the changes in sea level in the final years, the new findings revealed by AWH are intriguing (chapter 1). A test trench carried out by the HCP next to the east face of the multi-storey bastion of the House of the Telephus Relief has revealed the existence of yet another level of arches and columns below that visible on the AD79 surface; thus this part of the house originally extended over 4 levels. The arches, like those immediately above, were later filled in, the blockings bearing signs of water erosion (here it becomes a little tricky to marry up the narrative with the images although can be seen in section on p. 21). Evidently the sea level had risen, resulting in the abandonment of the two lowest floors. But the story doesn’t end here as the area in front of the bastion was protected by a large retaining wall and a ground level raised by 3 metres. The sea appears to have then retreated until sometime after the construction of the Suburban Baths in their present form next door when it rose again damaging the façade of the baths. This prompted the construction of a new protective wall in opus reticulatum along the southern façade of the baths, before the sea finally retreated again (similar repair to wave damage has recently been identified by the Laurentine Shore Project in a quay belonging to an imperial villa at Torre Paterno, Castelporziano). This phenomenon, known as bradyseism, was almost certainly connected to the build-up in activity in the magma chamber beneath Vesuvius that caused the ground above to rise and fall. Such conditions must be seen in the context of seismic activity during the same period; the evidence in the town above suggests that Herculaneum was indeed gravely damaged by the earthquake of AD 62/63 (and quite possibly later events) but by AD 79 appears to have largely recovered following a comprehensive program of rebuilding and redecorating. The picture on the shoreline is thus subtly different and appears to have been one that was continually changing.
To finish off, AWH has provided an invaluable contribution to studies of Herculaneum. However, this has also left us with many new questions. Can a harbour be identified and what kind of harbour might it have been? Given the presence of large harbours at Puteoli, Misenum and even Pompeii and that the shoreline at Herculaneum was rather steep , perhaps we should be looking for evidence of something relatively small that could have facilitated local trade. Shipping must have been utilized to bring building materials from the Campi Phlaegraei during the first century AD for example (as we can assume was the case for Surrentum). Was the narrow gap between the villa of the Papyri and Insula I wide enough for the river mouth on this side of the town? Further, what happened to the excavated tuff from the shoreline? Could some of it have been used elsewhere (i.e. at Naples)? This material is rather soft and not well-suited for use for columns or carved elements (a harder grey tuff was used early on for that) but was used for framing entranceways and for corners during the pre-Roman period. Finally, although the date at which the grid plan was set out remains uncertain, if we assume this took place during the 4th century BC, can any parallels between this and the defensive works be drawn with any other cities on the Bay of Naples at the same time?
(Click here for the introduction to this series of posts about Herculaneum Past and Future)
One of the aspects of AWH’s book that particularly interested me was his emphasis on the presentation of Herculaneum by its excavators, and the knock-on effect that this has had on preservation and approaches to conservation.
AWH makes the point that the excavations of Herculaneum (and Pompeii) have always been the result of the political circumstances and ideology of the time. Large-scale excavation is expensive, so there was always an agenda, a reason to spur on excavation. This is true of the earliest explorations of Herculaneum (and AWH is particularly good on Charles of Bourbon), the 19th century open-air excavations by Fiorelli, and the Fascist-era clearances under Maiuri. Excavations have the potential to generate widespread public interest, and this was exploited by the excavators in each of these periods. But public interest can also lead to criticism, and the earliest excavations were ‘a PR disaster’ for the new kingdom of Naples. Visitors were treated badly, and were shocked that finds were routinely destroyed by the excavators. The waves of criticism from around Europe led to a change of attitude, and the excavators began to consider how to present the ruins to visitors.
This has been a major factor at both Herculaneum and Pompeii ever since, and it has also had an impact on attitudes towards conservation. I really enjoyed reading about early experiments and techniques of conservation – although I would have liked more detail about this. But let’s jump forward to Maiuri’s excavations of Herculaneum from 1927 – 1943. Maiuri was Herculaneum’s principal publicist, and it is interesting that – unlike at Pompeii – all the publications of Herculaneum in this period are in Maiuri’s name. He staked his claim to Herculaneum even though, as James Andrews has pointed out to me, the excavation reports suggest that he didn’t visit the site all that often after 1927 (not surprising, really, since he was also responsible for Naples and Pompeii). And Herculaneum today is the result of Maiuri’s vision of the ancient town. In AWH’s words, ‘what we see is not an ancient town as preserved by an eruption, but fragments painstakingly pieced together, stabilized, reinforced and ‘restored’ by Maiuri’ (p.74).
In order to excavate an ancient site that had been devastated by a major volcanic eruption, Maiuri had to restore. Thus, for example, only 50% of the standing remains of the House of Telephus are ancient; the rest was carefully restored by Maiuri in line with his interpretations of the ancient texts. He also had the visitor in mind. The shop of the House of Neptune and Amphitrite is completely staged, as was the ‘room of the weaving girl’, which displayed the skeleton of a girl and small reconstruction loom – even though the skeleton was actually that of a young boy and no other finds were made in the room. And there are other examples where Maiuri chose to display a good story, not to be deceitful but to give a sense of life to the excavations that tourists could appreciate and enjoy. Of course, Maiuri wasn’t the first excavator to come up with the idea of presenting the excavations as a ‘living museum’, but he was the most successful. To my mind this attitude remains today (and not just in the Bay of Naples). I’ve even (rarely, it is true) seen artefacts ‘staged’ for journalists. Is this wrong? I’m not sure and I’d be interested to hear what others have to think. As long as there is a proper scientific publication is there any harm in playing to the public a little in the newspapers? But of course Maiuri’s excavation reports from Herculaneum and Pompeii have not been published, so this blurs the line between fact and fiction.
Despite Maiuri’s little fictions, he was responsible for establishing an effective maintenance programme for the buildings he restored. It was only when funding for this was withdrawn in the 1970s that Herculaneum began to decay. And this is what is happening at Pompeii today. I hardly need to remind anyone of the collapse of the Schola Armaturarum in November last year, which is merely the most publicised of the collapses that Pompeii has suffered in the last few years. Conservation is a burning issue today, and not just at Pompeii and Herculaneum, but it’s also a complex issue. This is why the Herculaneum Conservation Project is so important. This is the most ambitious conservation project in Europe – although part of its success is down to the sheer amount of money that the Packard Humanities Project has been prepared to spend on it. However, this project lights the way. Conservation influences excavation. This is something that Maiuri understood, too, and something that AWH discusses at length in his book. How do we find the money for conservation? Who should be responsible for it? One thing I would like to know is, what will happen to Herculaneum when the HCP finishes its work?
(For the introduction to this series of posts about Herculaneum Past and Future, see here.)
Posted on behalf of Jeremy Hartnett:
While we’re talking about overall impressions of Herculaneum: Past and Future, here are a few of my own. First, it bears repeating that this is a beautifully produced book. The color photographs are abundant and luscious, on par with what one would expect of a “coffee table” book. Anyone who hasn’t visited Herculaneum will be struck by the richness of the remains. This book does justice to a stunning site.
But, as Jo mentioned earlier, this book isn’t just for the layperson. To those who have studied the site it offers many insights (some of which I hope to touch on in a later post), and it will also serve advanced undergraduates very well. It’s easy, in fact, to imagine working through each of its short, swift, and eminently-readable chapters in a class period. The book is ready-made for lectures, but it’s also terrific fodder for classroom discussions, since Wallace-Hadrill does not simply present the material from the site, but simultaneously raises questions about methodology and exposes the process of doing archaeology and writing history (and, in some cases, re-doing and re-writing). I hope the publisher will consider a slightly “stripped down” paperback edition of the book for university audiences. The price of the book in its current form is very reasonable, given the wealth of visual material, but a more student-friendly size (this version barely fits in a backpack) and price would also find receptive buyers.
Funerary urn of Charles Walston (Waldstein), a Roman vase donated by Amedeo Maiuri (courtesy James Walston and with the permission of Frances Lincoln).
Virtually every chapter of the book presents new material from the Herculaneum Conservation Project, from the town’s geological history and evidence of bradyseism along the shorefront to fascinating material from the great sewer running in front of the Insula Occidentalis and artifacts uncovered during cleaning in public buildings and Bourbon cunicoli. Wallace-Hadrill mentions at several points a too-frequently-bypassed figure in the history of Herculaneum: Charles Waldstein, a Cambridge professor who rallied an international cast in the early twentieth century to promote excavation at the site. In fact, Waldstein’s own co-authored book about the city, Herculaneum: Past, Present, & Future (with Leonard Shoobridge, 1908), provided the inspiration for this book’s title. Though Waldstein’s ambitions went unrealized during his life, they have in many ways been satisfied and expanded by the HCP, which has brought together contributors from many nationalities for an interdisciplinary project that expands our knowledge of the site while preserving the archaeological patrimony for future generations. Herculaneum: Past and Future, in addition to providing an excellent introduction to the site, gives a taste of the fascinating scientific conclusions of the HCP. It will pique the appetite of scholars for the full publication of this project’s discoveries by its team of specialists.
(For the introduction to this series of posts about Herculaneum Past and Future, see here)
First, some background, which many of you will be familiar with. In 2001, in response to the years of neglect and decay at Herculaneum, AWH was invited by the Packard Humanities Institute to set up a collaborative project with the SANP to tackle the site’s conservation problems. And so the Herculaneum Conservation Project was born, and it celebrated its 10th birthday a couple of weeks ago. Employing mainly Italian experts from many different disciplines (which is undoubtedly why it has been so successful, since this is not a bunch of foreigners telling the locals what to do but a full partnership with the SANP), its impact on Herculaneum cannot be overstated. The site now has a proper drainage network, a series of new roofs, and an effective monitoring system that allows recurring problems to be dealt with. The conservation work of the HCP, as well as ongoing SANP activity using EU funds, has also led to unexpected archaeological discoveries and sometimes had a dramatic impact on what is known about Herculaneum. There are now new theories about its geology and urban plan, and evidence has been uncovered of quarrying along the seafront and of changes in sea level during the century before the eruption of AD 79. There has been excavation of the (in)famous sewer beneath the palaestra block (seen recently on TV), exploration of the old Bourbon tunnels, and new evidence from the Villa of the Papyri.
A preliminary discussion of these new discoveries and their interpretation form an important part of AWH’s book, and the conservation and presentation of the site is a recurring and important feature. But the book is much more than a simple publication of the HCP's results. It is a broad analysis of Herculaneum that incorporates the latest HCP data into a discussion of the ancient town's excavation and restoration, its inhabitants, its public buildings and houses, and how it differs from Pompeii. The book is not intended to be a definitive guide to Herculaneum, but it touches on almost every part of it and gives us an incredibly erudite and up-to-date account of this ancient city. It discusses both what we know and what we don’t know about Herculaneum, and what we might expect to learn in the future, and is accompanied by over 300 glossy photos of the site, including previously unpublished archival shots. Quite simply, it is an essential read which reaches out to three different audiences - the general public, the student and the scholar.
For Jeremy Hartnett's response to this post, see here.
Many of you will be aware that Andrew Wallace-Hadrill’s book on Herculaneum has just been published by Frances Lincoln Publishers – of course you are, because this is the book on Herculaneum that we’ve been waiting years for! Joseph Deiss’ book on Herculaneum came out in 1966, and there’s been no English-language book on this marvellous yet under-appreciated ancient site since. And yet, as anyone who works in the Bay of Naples already knows, big things have been happening at Herculaneum in the last 10 years, thanks to the Herculaneum Conservation Project. Now finally we have a preliminary discussion of these developments set within the wider framework of what can be reconstructed about the site, and you hardly need me to tell you how important and valuable this is.
You may remember that a couple of months ago I was asking for people who work on Herculaneum to contact me. This was because the nice people at Frances Lincoln had offered us to give us copies of Andrew’s new book for review on Blogging Pompeii. In fact, what will follow over the next week or so is not a formal review of the book, since a blog is not really the best format for this, but a series of personal reactions to it from a small number of contributors (see below for a list of posts). Each of us plans to write on a different aspect of the book, on topics that particularly interested us, and to raise issues for further discussion. And we invite all blog contributors to join this discussion (whether you’ve had a chance to read the book yet or not).
For those of you wanting to get your hands on a copy, here are the links to the publisher’s websites in the UK and USA. The book is retailing at £40/$60.
Those of you in the US may have a chance to hear Andrew Wallace-Hadrill talk about Herculaneum during the next month. Here are the dates and details of his lecture tour:
'Herculaneum: Living with Catastrophe'.
Herculaneum, which shared the fate of Pompeii in the eruption of Vesuvius, has been the object of a major conservation campaign sponsored by Packard Humanities Institute and directed by Dr. Wallace-Hadrill since 2001. New discoveries made in the course of the project provide dramatic evidence for major geological activity dating back a century before the eruption, and to a long drawn-out catastrophe with which the inhabitants lived.
24 March, Smith College (Graham Auditorium, Brown Fine Arts Center at Smith College , Northampton, MA) March 28, University of Florida (University Auditorium, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611) March 29, Emory College of Arts and Sciences (Reception Hall, Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory College of Arts and Sciences, Emory University, Departments of Art History and Classics, Atlanta, GA) March 31, San Antonio Museum of Art (San Antonio Museum of Art, 200 West Jones Avenue, San Antonio, Texas 78215) April 1, University of Texas - Austin (AT&T Education and Conference Center, University of Texas - Austin, Austin, TX)
It is time the politicians learned to respect the experts in which Italy abounds—giving them the authority and resources they need
By Andrew Wallace-Hadrill | From issue 219, December 2010
Published online 13 Dec 10
A building in Pompeii, little known and little visited, its function little understood, but known to some as the School of Gladiators, collapses to the ground one rainy night in early November. The shock waves move through the Italian to the international press, and the affair spirals up to the Italian parliament: a vote of confidence is demanded on the culture minister, Sandro Bondi. Many hasten to point the finger of blame. Is it Bondi’s fault, or is it that of the local superintendent (and if so which one, for three have followed in quick succession over the last year)? Or is it the fault of the special commissioners (and if so which) whom the Government appointed under emergency legislation some three years ago? Or is it rather the product of a general malaise, a systematic underinvestment in the site, a failure to prioritise the preservation of antiquities so exceptional that to lose them is an international scandal?
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) today sent a team of experts to investigate the state of the archaeological site at Pompeii in Italy. The inspection comes after two walls crumbled at the ruins of the 2,000-year-old Roman-era World Heritage site yesterday, the fourth collapse in a month.
“The universal threat is the weather”, says Andrew Wallace Hadral, Director of the Herculaneum conservation project near Naples.
He told Lydia O’Kane that “the penetration of water is the single gravest problem on these sites.”
He adds that, “its not just the problem of water, it’s also the problem of intense sunshine… so it’s baked for some of the year and soaked for another part of the year.” Listen to full interview with Lydia O'Kane.
Andrew Wallace-Hadrill ha lasciato la direzione della British School at Rome
Il Giornale dell'Arte n. 291, ottobre 2009 - Marisa Ranieri Panetta
ROMA. Cambio di direzione alla British School at Rome. Dopo quattordici anni Andrew Wallace-Hadrill ha lasciato la prestigiosa sede dei Parioli per diventare presidente del Collegio di Sidney Sussex nell’Università di Cambridge.
Al suo posto è arrivato un altro professore di Storia romana: Christopher Smith. Per Wallace-Hadrill non si tratta però di un biglietto aereo di sola andata. Legato alle antichità del nostro Paese, dove ha un gran numero di amici, continuerà a dirigere l’Herculaneum Conservation Project, del quale fanno parte il Packard Humanities Institute e la Soprintendenza di Napoli e Pompei.
Nato a Oxford 58 anni fa, Wallace-Hadrill, da sempre attratto dall’Italia e dalla sua storia, appassionato allo studio del latino (e del greco), ha avuto il suo colpo di fulmine a 16 anni, quando ha visitato gli scavi delle città vesuviane nella penisola sorrentina. Dai Grand Tour e viaggi sentimentali, alla brillante carriera di studioso con percorsi privilegiati: il periodo tra repubblica e impero e i luoghi sepolti dall’eruzione del 79 d.C., oggetto delle principali ricerche. Tra le numerose pubblicazioni scientifiche spiccano infatti Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (1994) e Rome’s Cultural Revolution (2009). Il professore inglese, lavorando gomito a gomito con i nostri archeologi, ha conosciuto i lacci burocratici, le difficoltà economiche e gestionali della tutela, e ha avuto a che fare con ministri e sottosegretari (“Con tutti ottimi rapporti personali”, ci tiene a precisare).
Che idea si è fatto della politica culturale italiana?
Premessa la mia stima per le tante figure che si sono mostrate più attente a questi problemi, devo confessare che trovo la politica italiana, in generale, molto deludente. Le difficoltà legate alla tutela e alla valorizzazione del patrimonio culturale sono profonde e le colpe non sono di un governo in particolare. Per quanto riguarda, ad esempio, Pompei ed Ercolano, ci sono stati in un lontano passato governi attenti, a cominciare dai primi re borbonici, passando per il ventennio fascista. In tempi più recenti, si è dimenticato che il patrimonio culturale porta un contributo enorme all’economia e che, per mantenere questa ricchezza, si deve continuamente investire fondi.
Cos’è che manca a suo avviso a Pompei?
L’ottima iniziativa della Soprintendenza autonoma è stata vanificata dalle nomine, spesso politiche, di amministratori responsabili delle finanze. Si parte sempre dalla convinzione errata che Pompei sia un tesoro da gestire e invece è una grande responsabilità culturale per l’intero Paese. Ciò che portano i siti archeologici in termini di conoscenze e di fruizione non può essere banalizzato dalla speranza di ricavarne unicamente una fonte di risorse economiche.
Dunque, una gestione della cultura troppo politicizzata.
Senz’altro. Sarebbe meglio adottare un sistema svincolato dal potere dei partiti per i finanziamenti e l’impatto economico. L’English Heritage (valido in Inghilterra, non nel resto del Regno Unito, Ndr), ad esempio, è un ente indipendente che ha il compito governativo della tutela dei beni; si avvale di indiscutibili competenze e gode anche di finanziamenti privati.
Tra i tanti Soprintendenti che ha conosciuto o visto all’opera, che ha maggiormente apprezzato?
In questi anni ho avuto il privilegio di incontrare soprintendenti straordinari per impegno e coraggio, come Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, Adriano La Regina, Eugenio La Rocca e Stefano De Caro, quest’ultimo anche nelle vesti direttive. Ho però l’impressione che il sistema non abbia sempre apprezzato la fortuna che ha avuto nel poter disporre di queste personalità.
E quale museo?
Penso subito a Roma: il Museo della Centrale Montemartini, purtroppo poco visitato, ma davvero un unicum nel panorama museale internazionale; e poi il Museo Nazionale Romano nel suo complesso e, in particolare, la sede di Palazzo Massimo.
Il Louvre, che è il museo più frequentato al mondo con i suoi 8,5 milioni di visitatori, vanta anche un’invidiata gestione e la vendita di oggettistica di alto livello. Eppure, di recente, è stato criticato dallo scrittore Pietro Citati per l’invasione di “torme di turisti, preoccuparti di tutto tranne che dell’arte” (“La Repubblica”, 24 luglio). Molti sono d’accordo, ma tanti vorrebbero un Louvre anche in Italia.
L’Italia è molto diversa dalla Francia, e anche dall’Inghilterra. Qui i poteri, come i musei, sono meno centralizzati e questo, secondo me, è un bene. Chi viene nel Bel Paese sa di trovare in ogni regione, in ogni città, un carattere distintivo e una storia particolare.
Il British Museum, in quanto a numeri, non scherza: sei milioni di opere e una cupola di vetro sulla più grande piazza coperta d’Europa.
Ricordo che è gratuito e, a seconda del gradimento, i visitatori possono lasciare o meno un’offerta all’uscita. Ma, al di là dell’importanza e della quantità dei manufatti, il suo indiscutibile successo è anche connesso a una particolarità: l’eccezionale merchandising che vende le copie solo di ciò che è esposto nelle sue sale; se si vuole il ricordo della Stele di Rosetta, insomma, bisogna andare a Londra. Spesso nei musei italiani si vende di tutto, a prescindere dalla collocazione materiale.
A proposito del British, che cosa ne pensa della vexata quaestio sulla restituzione dei marmi del Partenone?
Sono stato ad Atene nel nuovo Museo e devo confessare che la possibilità di poter ammirare i marmi originali vicino al loro tempio è molto seducente e, nello stesso tempo, si deve ammettere che alcuni simboli sono fondamentali per l’identità greca moderna. Credo tuttavia che i musei non siano ancora pronti a restituire reperti significativi al Paese d’origine perché, se passa questo principio, apriremmo un vaso di Pandora dalle incalcolabili conseguenze.
Quali progetti ha in cantieri l’Herculaneum Conservation Project? Con che frequenza tornerà in Italia?
Ci tengo molto a portare avanti il mio impegno e verrò almeno una volta al mese, anche perché ora sono in vista risultati straordinari, con tre scopi principali. Il primo riguarda la soluzione di problemi infrastrutturali del sito: ricreare una rete fognaria e riparare i tetti non più funzionanti; il secondo, la ricerca di modelli di continua manutenzione per conservare nel tempo l’integrità dell’antica Ercolano; il terzo, risolver i problemi creati dalla scarpata precipitosa nell’angola nord-occidentale, dove sporge un lato semisepolto della Basilica, che merita di essere messo in luce.
Per quanto riguarda invece i nuovi scavi? La responsabile degli scavi per la Soprintendenza, Maria Paola Guidobaldi, ha parlato di lavori in corso per un collegamento con il teatro…
E’ il nostro sogno comune; ricollegare il sito sia con il Teatro ancora sotterraneo, sia con la Villa dei Papiri. E ri-aprire l’Antiquarium.
