Pompéi, les causes d’un « scandale à l’italienne »?

This was on the radio in France yesterday:

Pompéi, les causes d’un « scandale à l’italienne » ?

Dans la nuit du 5 au 6 novembre 2010 Schola Armaturarum, dénommée aussi Schola Juventutis, s’effondrait.

Donnant directement sur l’artère principale de Pompéi -la via de l’Abbondanza- cette grande bâtisse, peinte dans les années 62-70 de notre ère, a été dégagée en 1916

Quelles sont les causes de cet effondrement, comme de celui du Colisée de Rome, peut-on y voir un « scandale à l’italienne », serions nous devant « les derniers jours de Pompéi » ?

Alix Barbet, directeur de recherche au CNRS
Jean Pierre Adam, chercheur au CNRS

You can listen to the interview here.

Interview with Andrew Wallace-Hadrill on Vatican Radio

From the Vatican Radio website:

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.

Listen to the full interview here.

Interview with Proietti

The new interim Superintendent Proietti gave an interview to Il Mattino at the beginning of the month (must have missed it before, sorry!). This is the link. From 1st July Proietti will be in sole charge of Pompeii, with Fiori's term as commissario coming to an end. The interview doesn't really reveal much - he thinks things have improved at Pompeii, but that more improvements could be made, and he plans to concentrate on basic maintenance of the site.

Interview: Fabrizio Pesando

I was invited to interview Fabrizio Pesando for Blogging Pompeii, who you'll all know as the head of the Department of the Classical World and the Ancient Mediterranean at the University of Naples "L'Orientale". He has decades of research and fieldwork experience, but here I'll only mention some of his key Vesuvian projects.

He's the director of the Project "Pompeii Regio VI" which is a joint project with the universities of Perugia, Trieste, Siena and Venice. He is also director of the L'Orientale project "The first centuries of Pompeii. Analysis of the city from the archaic to the augustan period (VI-I cent.B.C.)" (PRIN 2004-2006) and the project "Rereading Pompeii" (PRIN 2006-2008).

Along with an extensive bibliography on Pompeii and the Vesuvian sites, he has just launched the new journal Vesuviana, the launch of which will take place tomorrow (see you all there!).

Quando è stata la prima volta che ha visitato Pompei? Cosa reputa essere la cosa più speciale che abbia mai visto a Pompei?
La prima visita di studio è stata esattamente 30 anni fa, nell’Aprile del 1980, durante una gita dell’Università di Perugia organizzata da Filippo Coarelli. Da allora non ho più smesso di occuparmi dei siti vesuviani, anche se talvolta ho guardato in altre direzioni e le mie ricerche hanno preso altre direzioni. Allora era un altro mondo, che faceva sentire ancora l’importanza dell’archeologia come processo di conoscenza sul campo e dove ogni sito archeologico – quale fosse la sua rilevanza storica e monumentale - era importante in sé, in quanto frammento di un mondo che toccava a noi cercare non di ricostruire, ma di comprendere. In particolare, ho visto allora cose che non avrei più rivisto nello stesso modo: per fare un esempio la Casa del Balcone Pensile, che pochi anni prima era stata scenario per un film di genere (Scipione detto anche l’Africano) era allora ancora accessibile: non lo sarebbe mai più stata, dopo i danni causati dal terremoto del 1980.

Lei sta attualmente curando la nuova rivista scientifica Vesuviana, ce ne può parlare?
La rivista ha lo scopo di contribuire alla conoscenza dei siti vesuviani attraverso studi di vario genere (storico, epigrafico, archeologico, linguistico), per fornire una visione quanto mai ampia delle interpretazioni di questi straordinari siti, nel solco della tradizione delle Scienze Storiche dell’Antichità che hanno fondato tutti i nostri saperi.

Quali sono i motivi che l’hanno spinta a lanciare la rivista Vesuviana?
L’offerta editoriale sui siti vesuviani è piuttosto ampia, soprattutto per quanto riguarda le monografie, scritte in varie lingue. Per Vesuviana, che si avvale di un ampio comitato scientifico internazionale, l’idea è di costituire un terreno di confronto e di dialogo sulle ricerche effettuate negli ultimi, intensi, dieci anni, che hanno visto equipe di tutto il mondo lavorare e studiare Pompei in un clima di grande collaborazione. Ed è ai giovani, che hanno costituito e costituiscono il nucleo vitale di tutti questi gruppi di ricerca, che la rivista si rivolge, intendendo ospitare, insieme agli articoli dei responsabili delle ricerche, anche i loro contributi, segnale importante per quella trasmissione delle conoscenze a cui facevo riferimento.

Può parlarci della ricerca/dei progetti che sta attualmente portando avanti?
Al momento sono impegnato alla pubblicazione dei risultati delle campagne di scavo 2007-2008 nell’ambito del Progetto Regio VI, che dal 2001 ha coinvolto l’Università di Napoli "L’Orientale" insieme a quelle di Perugia, Trieste, Venezia e Siena. Il progetto, esteso a quasi l’intero quartiere, ha permesso di individuare un numero consistente di strutture arcaiche, di scavare quasi interamente 8 abitazioni di III secolo a.C. e di individuare i processi di organizzazione degli spazi del quartiere fra l’età il VI secolo e il tardo I secolo a.C. Finora abbiamo pubblicato resoconti di scavo, due monografie (dedicate alle insulae VI,10 e VI,13) e un elevato numero di interventi in convegni internazionali. La mia prossima campagna di scavo, programmata per la fine dell’estate, prevede la conclusione dei lavori nella Casa del Granduca Michele (VI,5,5,) e del Centauro (VI,9,3), dove sono state scoperte due “protocase” in buono stato di conservazione risalenti rispettivamente alla prima metà e alla fine del III secolo a.C., e di cui abbiamo individuato successivi rifacimenti fino alla loro completa ricostruzione nel II secolo a.C. che comportò un rialzamento del livello di calpestio di circa 60-80 cm.
Dal 2009 faccio parte di un gruppo di ricerca costituito da vari centri di ricerca italiani e stranieri che ha l’obiettivo di studiare sistematicamente le mura di Pompei, delle quali (paradosso della Pompeianistica) non possediamo ad oggi neppure il rilievo completo. Ma la complessità della ricerca richiede fondi di finanziamento molto elevati ed è per ora questa la ricerca che stiamo effettuando.

Quale lavoro attuale reputa di particolare importanza? In che direzione vorrebbe che andassero gli studi pompeiani - quali sono, secondo Lei, le questioni chiave che bisognerebbe affrontare?
Tutti gli studi pompeiani sono di grande importanza; direi però che oggi quelli di maggior rilievo riguardano gli aspetti urbanistici, la ricostruzione della modalità che portarono alla nascita della città e la migliore calibrazione cronologica della storia edilizia dei monumenti; come è sempre stato fatto, quanto conosciamo e conosceremo di Pompei potrà essere esteso a realtà ad essa simili nello spazio e nel tempo

Se I lettori del blog dovessero leggere soltanto un libro sull’archeologia vesuviana quale consiglierebbe?
Difficile scelta; emendato di alcune imprecisioni che gli studi più recenti hanno chiarito, direi ancora il vecchio testo di A. Mau, Pompeji in Leben und Kunst (1909), perché ci offre quella visione interdisciplinare che la Pompianistica, nella migliore interpretazione del termine, deve sempre fornire agli studiosi.

C’è qualcosa altro che vorrebbe dire ai nostri lettori del Blog?
Ricordarsi della straordinaria lezione che il confronto con una realtà complessa come quella dei siti vesuviani ci impartisce: lavoriamo su frammenti che continuamente arricchiscono le nostre conoscenze e che formano un percorso di conoscenza, la cui conclusione è ancora lontana. Percorrere questo cammino, anche solo per un breve tratto, costituisce un grande privilegio.

Interview: Eric Poehler and Pompeiana.org

Here's another interview in our continuing series on Blogging Pompeii. I recently asked a few questions of Eric Poehler, founder and managing editor of Pompeiana.org.


I want to thank Eric not only for all his great work on the site, but also for answering my emails at such a productive time in his life. Eric's has recently become a dad! Yay Eric!
___________________________________________________________________

FT: How do you define the mission of the Pompeiana website?

EP: Pompeiana.org, I believe, can be a primary resource for all people interested in the ancient city of Pompeii. Although the site is targeted principally to academics, it is our mission to make Pompeiana.org the “one-stop shop” for researchers and the interested public alike. To accomplish this goal, the site must be more than simply the biggest list of links. Instead, we want Pompeiana.org to be an online repository for resources relating to the ancient city, eventually including original research by scholars in the field.

FT: How do you think Pompeiana fits in with other sites about Pompeii on the web? What other sites are out there that can contribute to our knowledge of Pompeii?

EP: The site should serve as a complement to the other sites online. There is no reason to try to compete with other websites, nor is there a need to ‘reinvent the wheel’ so to speak. Some websites will always be better at what they do. For example, YouTube will always be the best place for videos about Pompeii and Google Maps now provides street view for Pompeii offering interesting digital walk-throughs. There are three specific sites about Pompeii itself – the Pompeii Superintendency site, Pompeii in Pictures, and Blogging Pompeii– that I think Pompeiana.org strongly complements. The first of these, obviously contains a wealth of information on new and on-going initiatives, but their purpose is broader than research alone. On the other hand, the mission of the other two websites is narrower. Pompeii in Pictures is a treasure of imagery that opens up all the ruins to our eyes, including bare masonry walls, picking up with photographic recordation where the Pompei: pitture e mosaici volumes left off. Blogging Pompeii stands out, however, as the most important new tool on the web for Pompeianists. Blogging Pompeii has accomplished what Pompeiana.org has been unable to do: build an online community that can share information about the latest news, events, publications, etc. and simultaneously serve as a forum to discuss those issues. Broadly speaking, I hope Pompeiana.org will grow as a research tool to make finding and using the best parts of these sites, and others, as easy as possible. I envision taking the user from, for example, a location on a map of the ancient city to the current research on that location, images of it, and a discussion of timely opinions all with the speed of the internet.

FT: Having a bibliography for Pompeii on the site is a terrific idea & I see your page is a work in progress. What are your plans for that?

EP: A robust bibliography is primary to the academic usefulness and legitimacy of Pompeiana.org. With the assistance of keen library and IT professionals at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, I am building a bibliographic database that is accessible using the standard search terms of author, title, year and, eventually, key words. Populating such a database with citations, of course, has always been the hard part. Today, however, this difficulty can be overcome by mining the ever-expanding online sources – worldcat.org in particular – and by tapping social networking sites to ask scholars to share their references. It is fascinating to me to think of the possibilities. Not only will even the most obscure references eventually be captured, but the explosion of full-text sources online will make it possible for many books, articles, and illustrations to be instantly available. Full text is available already in particular areas. Some laudable examples are the Internet Archive, which has a number of out-of-copyright works, including Fiorelli’s Pompeianarum Antiquitatum Historia some of the Notizie degli Scavi di antichita, the Fortuna visiva which website adds more books as well as images of Pompeii from the 18^th and 19^th centuries, and FastiOnline, perhaps the very best source for the latest information from the field. I want our bibliography on Pompeiana.org to be a first stop for researching the ancient city, a place to find references and to be redirected as seamlessly as possible to other online resources.

FT: Clearly it is the younger generation who immediately think of the web as a way to disseminate scholarly content. How can we convince the "old guard" that the Internet can be a great tool for academic work?

EP: The conservative answer is the standard ten-year plan, or rather, tenure plan: get it, then change the world. But certainly there are more progressive, less cynical approaches. First, we must be vigilant to ensure that what we produce is quality scholarship and not digital for the sake of being digital. In that sense, only the medium of delivery would be different. Beyond maintaining quality, the flexibility of digital formats must eventually be explored to do the things that print formats cannot. Multimedia support for narrative argumentation will be one route, nicely illustrated by the Finnish Project’s treatment of the Domus Marci Lucretii. Data rich sites, such as Pim Allison’s online companion to The Insula of the Menander, vol. III is another avenue that will revolutionize how we publish our ideas and the evidence that supports them.

What I think will happen is that the growing strength of online research tools to find, manage, deploy and (most importantly) analyze information will make the web a more palatable place to publish. There are also more calculating answers that fit into this scenario as well. Web publishing makes the ideas therein not only instantaneously available, but also portable, allowing those ideas to have the greatest chance to make an impact. Of course, the difference between the enormous potential readership on the web and the more limited circulation of print publishing is legitimacy. The flood gates will open when more big names in the field put their weight behind online publication.

On a more philosophical level, it is surprising to me that the power of the web can be dismissed by anyone. A computer connected to the internet is replacing so many iconic items of modern daily life – the newspaper, the television, the phonebook, the telephone – and in most cases improving how we can use those items. Watching the revolutionary events in Iran on Twitter a few months ago clearly demonstrates the raw power of even the most superficial and time wasting of online applications. The question isn’t how can academia escape the omnipresence of the internet, the question is why would it want to?

FT: What other plans do you have for the future of Pompeiana?

EP: The most innovative and challenging initiative in the works for Pompeiana.org is an online Geographical Information System for Pompeii. For my dissertation research and analyses I spent hundreds of hours digitizing the city to serve as the basemap. It horrified me to learn a few years ago that others were enduring the same labors. These data should be available to scholars so that they are free to use those many hours working on their topic rather than the digital infrastructure of its representation and analysis. To this end, we are working to produce a map of Pompeii that researchers can navigate online with the additional ability to download basic spatial information to use on their local computers. In partnership with MainStreetGIS, we expect a functional Phase One GIS to be in place by early 2010 to replace the current beta version.

A GIS, however, is not to be confused with a map. Instead, a GIS uses space itself as the structuring metaphor to organize information. Thus, while an alphabetical list is a very common means to organize information, it is not particularly intuitive or flexible one. A GIS uses the representation of a place itself to contain the information about that place and in so doing, also puts the information for adjacent properties (e.g., a neighboring workshop) or associated properties (e.g., other workshops not in proximity) at the user’s immediate disposal. I am encouraged by the power of this organizational structure to believe that the GIS will in the future be the primary platform for using Pompeiana.org. By linking the searchable bibliography, full-text articles and books, online images, and other electronic resources to each property, research can be done by simply clicking on the location of interest to bring together all of these materials in one place. It’s a big project, but so were the indispensable works of the PPM, the CTP, and Garcia y Garcia’s bibliography. Now imagine them all together, on your screen and weighing only as much as your laptop.

Finally, I would like to put out an open call to all who are interested in making a powerful online resource for Pompeii a reality. This can be done by sharing your personal bibliography, digital imagery, data, or spatial data. We are always in need of your suggestions, advice, and criticisms. Most valuable of all is sharing your time and expertise. If anyone wants to help, please send an email to Pompeiana@gmail.com.

Italian volcano questions

Those of you interested in the current state of knowledge about Italian volcanoes should check out this interview with Dr. Boris Behncke of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Catania, which has just been published on the Eruptions blog. Vesuvius and the Campi Flegrei naturally feature quite prominently. It's interesting stuff.

Radio interview: Rebecca Benefiel talks about graffiti

Turn on the radio today (or listen on the internet at www.wmra.org) to hear Rebecca Benefiel talk about graffiti in Pompeii! Rebecca is the guest on Virginia Insight, which airs Mondays at 3pm (EST?). You can call in and ask Rebecca questions on 888-967-2825, or 888-WMRA-TALK.

Here are the details:

The Graffiti of Pompeii. Rebecca Benefiel studies graffiti. She believes it can tell a lot about a society's culture. Especially if it was written by people of all classes, about all manner of issues, and got placed on every type of venue -- from the public court house to the walls of private homes. Even if it was written 2000 years ago.
The Lexington researcher shares her findings about the graffiti of Pompeii.
Guest: Rebecca Benefiel - Assistant Professor of Classics, Washington and Lee University.

Interview: Estelle Lazer

The publication of Estelle Lazer's book 'Resurrecting Pompeii' last month has caused a bit of a stir. This is hardly surprising, for two very good reasons.
Firstly, we have been waiting for this book for a long time. Until now the only publications of the skeletal evidence from the Vesuvian settlements have been Sarah Bisel's studies of the bodies found at Herculaneum, and there has been nothing from Pompeii to compare to Bisel's work. Estelle's study fills a gaping hole in Pompeian studies.
Secondly, Estelle is, without a doubt, one of the nicest Pompeianists you could hope to meet. It must be more than 15 years since we met one summer in Pompeii, and I remember it as a particularly fun time. So, because not everyone who works at Pompeii will have had the opportunity to meet Estelle, I asked her to answer a few questions for this blog. Here's what she had to say ...

1. Can you tell us a little about your academic background and how you got into studying the human remains from Pompeii?
My first degree is a BA Hons in archaeology, with particular emphasis on Classical, Near Eastern and Historical archaeology. My interest in human remains commenced with my honours thesis, which involved skeletal studies in Near Eastern archaeology. At that time no courses in forensic archaeology were were available in Australia. The forensic pathologist who was responsible for the investigation of skeletal remains at the city morgue and coroner's court offered to take me on as a volunteer apprentice and I learnt anatomy by attending autopsies and was called in to assist whenever bodies came in from the bush. Eventually, I did a formal anatomy course at the University of Sydney. The opportunity to study the human remains at Pompeii came as a result of the involvement of the University of Sydney in a multinational, multidisciplinary project in Pompeii. I was amazed to discover that there had not been a modern systematic study of this skeletal collection and I applied to the Superintendency of Pompeii to undertake this work. I completed my PhD on this topic in the Anatomy Department of the University of Sydney.

2. What problems did you encounter when studying the human bones?
The human skeletal remains were not appreciated as a valuable scientific resource until the latter part of the twentieth century. While they had been stored, they had not been adequately curated and as a result had become disarticulated. This meant that I had to design a research project to accommodate the limitations of the material.
The bones were stored in unoccupied ancient buildings in Pompeii with other uncatalogued artefacts. These bones had to be studied in situ with no laboratory facilities, or even tables or adequate light. I had to be locked in with them as these stores also contained precious finds, like portions of marble statues. Only three custodians had security clearance to handle the keys to these buildings. Occasionally the morning custodian forgot to tell the afternoon one about my location when they changed shifts. This meant I had to suffer many hours of incarceration. They were invariably quite apologetic when I was eventually liberated. Although I worked alone I had many companions as these buildings also housed their own ecosystems. These included bats, rodents of various kinds, snakes, insects, lizards and birds who found empty skulls to be convenient nesting places.

3. Your book is as much about the history of the excavations as the human remains - how do these two topics fit together?
It was essential to engage with the history of the excavations to understand why the bones had been neglected for nearly 250 years and to determine the impact of the "culture of bodies," which involved romantic storytelling based on specific skeletons and their context. Nineteenth century literature, notably Edward Bulwer Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii, exerted a huge influence on the interpretation of the skeletal evidence, which has continued into the twenty first century. The aim of my project was to separate myth from the actual evidence and establish what the skeletal remains reveal about the lives and deaths of the Pompeian victims of the AD 79 eruption.

4. You also work in the Antarctic. What exactly do you do there and how does it fit in with your Pompeian studies?
The work I do in Antarctica is very different to my work in Pompeii. I have studied American sealing sites in the Sub-Antarctic and a site associated with an early twentieth century scientific expedition on the Antarctic mainland. This work has involved both excavation and the development of strategies for cultural heritage management in these remote areas. We have pioneered various techniques for ice excavation, including the use of ice cores and chainsaws.
Field work in Antarctica is a bit more challenging than in Pompeii. My first expedition experience involved sailing down to Antarctica in a 21 metre boat, which was not ice strengthened. It took three weeks each way. We camped in the ice. The wildlife is larger, noisier and often more aromatic than any I have encountered in Pompeii. This is especially true for sites located within the territory of mating fur seals and three hundred thousand nesting penguins.

5. Do you have any future plans for working in Pompeii?
While I will always continue my interest in the human remains from Pompeii, especially the casts, I am currently involved in the development of a new research project in conjunction with the Department of Architectural Science, University of Sydney. This project aims to apply modern techniques of environmental analysis to ancient buildings in order to gain a quantitative understanding of the living experience of the ancient occupants of houses of various types in Pompeii.

I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of 'Resurrecting Pompeii'. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. Congratulations, Estelle!