The populations of Pompeian city blocks

Recently I have had to think about the possible population sizes of individual Pompeian city blocks, and insula IX, 3 in particular. While the question of the total population size of Pompeii remains much debated and the estimates vary greatly, I have not come across many (well, none) estimates of populations in individual city blocks, if not including simplistic divisions of the total assumed population by the number of assumed insulae. And the only discussion I can think of on the possible breakdown of the population into different housing units is Wallace-Hadrill´s article Houses and Households: Sampling Pompeii and Herculaneum (In Rawson (ed.) Marriage, Divorce and Children in Ancient Rome 1991). Working down from a total population of 10 000, he divided houses of Pompeii into four quartiles on the basis of a sample study, and proposed a certain number of individuals in each type of houses.

Following his categorisation a total of some 120 individuals in insula IX, 3 can be suggested. However, if we assume that some houses were uninhabited or their population was reduced in AD 79, we must decrease the number. If we assume that the total population of Pompeii was greater than 10 000, or if we assume that upper floors of the insula housed more people, we must increase the total. The number remains very hypothetical.

Nevertheless I would be curious to hear opinions about the overall topic of population estimates, references to other estimates of populations of insulae and in general thinking about the spilt-up of the total population.

Eruption of Vesuvius in 1944

Just found this on the BBC WW2 Peoples' War website (an archive of people's war memories), and thought others might be interested ... It is a series of diary entries by Alfred John Boon, a British soldier stationed in Naples in 1944.

Mar 19th Vesuvius very restless.
Mar 20th Even more so.
Mar 21st Eruption starts. Could see lava erupting from crater. Go up to sites on sides to help evacuation with recovery vehicles. Earth tremors most of the time.
Mar 22nd Tremors during day with loud explosions. Night clouds of smoke with pulsating glows. Showers of ash falling. Continual equipment evacuation.
Mar 23rd Evacuation continues. Canopies on vehicles burnt by ash. Wear balaclavas and helmets night. Great boulders being spewed. Electric storms. Above the crater, lava runs as quick as a stream.
Mar 24th Pity the vineyard owners. Their yards are buried. Help them with their property if possible. Explosions are blowing doors open and causing some structural damage. “Red snow” falling today. Blows in everywhere.
Mar 25th Very little “snow” today. But some rain to churn it up. Material from crater, looks like billowing cauliflowers. Talked to a Volcanologist on mountain. Suggested it was a bit dodgy in their observatory. Said he stay there no matter what. Had waited for it for years.
Mar 26th Very quiet. Dust blowing out to sea. Most equipment moved. Not a lot of damage. Burns mostly to canopies and cables. In Torre Annunziata the dust was a foot deep.
April 1st-4th Visited sites Naples, Salerno, Sorrento. Went to opera Castellammare. Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci.
July 14th Took advance party to Lubico, near Rome. Passed through Cassino. How stupid to smash a place up like that. Didn’t do any good.
July 22nd Went to Scafati. E. and M.E. school, A.O.D. Pontegragnano, Pompeii ruins, and Castlamara, collecting stores and documents. (Not at Pompeii, that was a visit).

There is a great description of the eruption by the British travel writer, Norman Lewis, who was also stationed in Naples (and in charge of approving marriages between British servicemen and local women!), which I don't have to hand. But you can read a bit more about the eruption and the Allied reaction to it in a blog post entitled, 'Where’s a Volcano Monitoring Station When You Need It?'.

Tourism in the Mezzogiorno

A recent report from the Associazione della Città d’arte e di Cultura (Cidac) analyses cultural tourism in southern Italy. To summarise in a fairly crude fashion, the south doesn't get nearly the same visitor numbers as central or northern Italy, and a large number of its 'cultural cities' aren't even mentioned in the most popular guidebooks like the 'Lonely Planet' or 'Rough Guide' series. Naples fairs better than most, although tourist numbers fell last year due to the refuse problem (which STILL hasn't been solved in many areas - like Ercolano, where the streets are unbelievely vile). There is an interesting list of visitor numbers to major temporary exhibitions in the south in 2001 - 2008 (source). The Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli dominates:

• Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli, Storie da un’eruzione, visitatori 256,134, anno 2003
• Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli, Argenti a Pompei, visitatori 229.014, anno 2003
• Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli, Ambre. Trasparenze dell’Antico, visitatori 195.574, anno 2007
• Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli, Arte e cultura in Cina, visitatori 129.793, anni 2005/2006
• Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli, Francesco Clemente, visitatori 126.718, anni 2002/2003 - Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli, Egittomania, visitatori 117.596, anno 2007
• Palazzo dei Normanni Palermo, Spitzweg, Baselitz, visitatori 103.980, anno 2006
• Museo Archeologico Nazionale Napoli, Jeff Koons, visitatori 94.003, anno 2003
• Castel Sant’Elmo Napoli, Gauguin e la Bretagna, visitatori 89.163, anni 2003/2004
• Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Capodimonte Napoli, Tiziano e il ritratto di corte, visitatori 85.002, anno 2006.

One of the points of the report, however, is that if these exhibitions had been held in central or northern Italy, the visitor numbers would have been doubled. The conclusion: the south is failing to exploit its cultural heritage. You can read more about the report here.

Event: Il futuro del passato: insegnamento del patrimonio culturale di Ercolano

Anyone interested in raising awareness of the importance and fragility of heritage at school level, may be interested in attending Monday's presentation. The International Centre for the Study of Herculaneum is working with five schools in the modern city of Ercolano, offering activities in the classroom and on site that help the children appreciate the importance of their archaeology, history and traditions.

Date: Monday 30 March 2009
Time: 10.30
Location: Villa Campolieto, Corso Resina 283, Ercolano
For more information: centro[at]herculaneum.org

Notizie degli Scavi On-line

Screencap of Notizie degli Scavi di Antichita' 1914 from archive.org
Skeletons found in the House of the Cryptoportico

As I was grading papers last term, I was really pleased to see that an undergraduate student had cited the Notizie degli Scavi di Antichita' in her paper on the Temple of Isis at Pompeii. Now, I'm teaching at the ICCS (a.k.a. the Centro) in Rome this academic year, and the student was a characteristically sharp and gung-ho centrista, so this sort of spirited pursuit of the raw stuff of an excavation was not entirely unexpected. But what surprised me was where she had found the Notizie -- on-line.

Perhaps this isn't news to fellow bloggers, but a number of Notizie degli Scavi volumes have been expertly scanned and posted on archive.org. Check it out for yourself. I haven't experimented with all the interfaces, but the handy flip-book option is like browsing, well, a real book (that's the screencap above). You can zoom in and get a closer look at the pictures or text, and -- best of all, from my perspective -- you can even do a search of the journal's text. The run of scanned volumes appears to start with 1878 and end with 1924, and I believe it is even downloadable for poolside Motel Villa dei Misteri pleasure reading.

Though the debate about digitizing books will undoubtedly rage on, this development certainly aids the research of people (like me) who don't usually have a full-run of the NSA at their fingertips. And even for our students who don't have Italian, such a resource might nevertheless open up possibilities for assignments or for interactive demonstrations of how we know what we know about sites like Pompeii.

Blogging Pompeii Social Event in Rome

A quick reminder to those of you in Rome - our first social event is this coming Monday evening. Details are in my previous post. I hope to see lots of you there!