MSU art professor's theory about ancient decorating choices casts new light on Roman paintings

From MSU News Service (By Carol Schmidt):

A four-year study of the wall paintings found in an elegant villa buried by Vesuvius in 79 A.D. indicate that ancient Romans -- just like modern decorators -- sometimes chose to renovate and revive older styles rather than redo in the latest techniques.

The research by Regina Gee, a professor of art history in Montana State University's College of Arts and Architecture, challenges the long-held assumption that Roman painting styles progressed in a linear fashion.

Gee presented her findings today at the 11th International Colloquium of the International Association for Ancient Wall Paintings in Ephesus-Selcuk, Turkey. The title of her paper is "Fourth-Style Responses to 'Period Rooms' of the Second and third Styles at Villa A ('of Poppaea') at Oplontis."

Gee's findings are based on her four years of research of the wall paintings in the elegant Villa Oplontis (http://www.oplontisproject.org/index.html), located five kilometers west of Pompeii in the current Italian city of Torre Annunziata. The villa was 140 years old and had been renovated and enlarged several times before it was buried in the eruption of Vesuvius. Experts consider the villa to have the best and most extensive wall paintings preserved of any known Roman villa. ...

Follow link above for full story and photos.

Pompeii articles in new BAR

A new BAR International Series volume has a few papers on Pompeii that may be of interest:

BAR S2079 2010: Making History Interactive. Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA). Proceedings of the 37th International Conference, Williamsburg, Virginia, United States of America, March 22-26, 2009 edited by Bernard Frischer, Jane Webb Crawford and David Koller.
ISBN 9781407305561. £60.00. ix+408 pages; illustrated throughout with maps, plans, figures, drawings and photographs; with CD.

Including:

Precision Recording of Pompeian Standing Remains via Stitched Rectified Photography / Anderson, M (pp.1-10)

Digitizing Pompeii's Forum / Guidi, G.; Remondino, F.; Russo, M.; Menna, F.; Rizzi, A.; Ercoli, S. (pp.106-116)

Determining Function of Pompeian Sidewalk Features through GIS Analysis / Weiss, C. (pp.363-372)

Conference: La Renaissance de la Villa de P. Fannius Synistor

Musée royal de Mariemont et Musées royaux d’Art et d’Histoire de Bruxelles

Mercredi 21 (après-midi), jeudi 22 et vendredi 23 avril 2010

Plus de cent ans après leur découverte et leur dispersion, les somptueuses fresques de la villa de P. Fannius Synistor à Boscoreale près de Pompéi n’ont jamais fait l’objet d’une recherche collective, qui permettrait de réunir et de croiser les multiples approches qu’elles suscitent et de remettre à l’honneur ces peintures, qui comptent parmi les plus intéressantes du Deuxième Style pompéien.

Mais récemment, une collaboration de plusieurs chercheurs s’est mise en place autour de différentes questions relatives aux fresques du Musée royal de Mariemont et l’idée d’un Colloque international s’est imposée, afin de favoriser cette rencontre attendue depuis longtemps, où seraient conviées de nombreuses compétences et spécialités : non seulement l’archéologie, l’histoire, la topographie, l’étude pluridisciplinaire de la peinture romaine, mais aussi l’histoire des collections, les problèmes de conservation, de restauration, de muséologie, les projets de reconstitution virtuelle. Il pourrait en résulter une nouvelle vision pour le public de tous les musées concernés.

Les conditions difficiles d’étude des fresques, écartelées entre pays et continents, ne pourront être dépassées que par de véritables échanges scientifiques : c’est la raison d’être du programme ci-joint, qui a été élaboré avec l’espoir de redonner vie, couleurs et lumière à cette villa d’exception.

Comité scientifique organisateur (par ordre alphabétique) :
Alix Barbet, CNRS-ENS, Paris
Bettina Bergmann, Mount Holyoke College
Eva Dubois-Pelerin, CNRS-ENS, Paris
Cécile Evers, MRAH Bruxelles
Joan Mertens, Metropolitan Museum, New York
Grete Stefani, Antiquarium de Boscoreale
Annie Verbanck-Piérard, Musée royal de Mariemont

En collaboration avec l’Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, Laboratoire « Archéologies d’Orient et d’Occident », CNRS-UMR 8546 (Dominique Briquel)

Full programme available here.

Should we rebury Pompeii?

Google Street View has generated an awful lot of chatter about Pompeii on Twitter and in other blogs. I came across one blogger the other day who was advocating the reburial of the site as a solution to its conservation problems, since computer-generated reconstructions mean that tourists no longer need to visit. Conservators are fighting a losing battle, even when they have appropriate funding. Pompeii is dying, there is no doubt about it.
You can imagine my knee-jerk reaction to the idea of burying Pompeii, because I'm sure you all just had it too! But since then I have been mulling the idea over. So here are my thoughts, in no particular order. I'd be really interested to know what anyone else thinks.

• This is not a new idea, but one that surfaces every few years, often alongside with the idea of building a replica Pompeii for tourists (the best versions imagine the real site left to scholars - now, there's an idea!). The thing is, a replica - whether real or digital - can't reproduce the atmosphere of Pompeii and the experience of walking its streets and entering its houses. We need to remember that Pompeii is a tourist site. I sometimes think that we scholars are there on sufferance. The SAP likes us, for sure, for I don't think the Italian government cares all that much unless there is money to be made. Perhaps I am being too cynical. But note that the majority of Fiori's current initiatives are to do with making the site more accessible and enjoyable for tourists. Even if scholars all agreed that Pompeii should be reburied, the government would never allow it to happen.
• Burying Pompeii would be an economic disaster for the region. Ok, the entrance ticket money goes directly to the site and funds (one hopes) conservation and other necessary works. But an entire modern town depends on Pompeii for its livelihood - hotels, restaurants, shops, stalls. This is an economically depressed region at the best of times. Reburying Pompeii would destroy it.
• How exactly would it be reburied? Practically, I mean. It took years of effort to get rid of the fill in the first place! Anyone who has read the excavation reports knows that this issue was a serious and costly one. Thank goodness for the A3 autostrada, since that used up a lot of lapilli! So what could be used to rebury the site, where would it come from, and how much would it cost to do it?!
• Covering Pompeii over would mean the end of stratigraphic excavation. Reconstructions would document the state of the town in AD 79 (or should I say 2009!), but investigations into Pompeii's pre-AD 79 history would stop. We wouldn't be able to answer any of our questions about the development of the site, for example.
• Would any reconstruction really be able to document everything? Scholars are finding new things all the time - I'm thinking about recent research into upper floors and on graffiti, but there are other examples too. And wouldn't the reconstructions decay too (look at the current condition of the Pompejanum at Aschaffenburg, for example)? Even computer-generated reconstructions will eventually degrade.

So is there is a solution? Personally I don't think we can stop the destruction of Pompeii. We can slow it (as they are doing in Herculaneum), but Pompeii won't be around 1000 years from now. Just look at the parts of the town excavated in the 1700s. The walls have crumbled, the wall-paintings have disappeared. And this has happened DESPITE conservation attempts (yes, the first efforts of conservation occurred in the 1770s and have continued since then). So our job is to study and record (in multiple formats) as much as we can now, and to support any efforts of conservation. There is no point complaining about the inevitable decay of the site.

Virtual Tour of the House of Marcus Lucretius, IX.3.5/24

Posted on behalf of Laura Nissinen:

"Interesting post on the Digital Pompeii! New technologies seem promising in presenting archeological material and hopefully the digital techniques can be used in the future also in more scientific context.
I would like to remind you of a virtual tour in the House of Marcus Lucretius (IX,3,5/24), which is available at http://arkisto.metropolia.fi/pompeji/flash.html.
The 3D model has been realized by the Finnish team (Expeditio Pompeiana Universitatis Helsingiensis in co-operation with Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences."

Conference paper: A Re-painted Amazon

Paper presented at the EVA 2009 London Conference (Electronic Visualisation and the Arts, 6-8 July 2009).

A Re-painted Amazon - G Earl, G Beale, J Happa, M Williams, G Turley, K Martinez and A Chalmers

This paper describes an ongoing project to digitally record, reconstruct and repaint a 2000-year-old painted Roman statue from Herculaneum, Italy. The paper considers the archaeological potential for extremely detailed laser scanning and digital recreation of Roman statuary, and visualisation within a physically accurate context. It focuses on the archaeological significance of the emerging technologies employed and their potential to illuminate our understanding of concepts such as Roman aesthetics and the impact of spatial context on perception of statues.

For more information: graeme.earl[at]soton.ac.uk
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/archaeology/acrg/