The Romans are Coming! Hide the Good Stuff!

Source: www.repubblica.it (see link below)

Two rare female bronze statues dating to the fifth and fourth centuries BC have been found in Graviscae, the port town of Tarquinia and an important center for trade in the Mediterranean. On the heels of the discovery of a completely intact tomb in the Doganaccia area in Tarquinia, archaeologists have announced this new find. An Italian article is here, with English summary here. A short slideshow can be found here. The dig is being conducted by the University of Perugia in conjunction with the Soprintendenza of Archaeological Heritage in Southern Etruria.

Found in the temple of Demeter, the objects were likely hidden there in advance of the Romans in 281 BC. Graviscae was destroyed during that campaign, and in 181 BC the Romans founded a colony on the same site. Also found in the sanctuary was a bronze incense burner (thymiaterion) and an ivory pyxis (round container) with a carved Siren. The bronze statues of female divinities are rare; we have perhaps a dozen or so other examples.

A Graveyard in Pompeii...

"Dinner at Trimalchio's" by Petronius (part of the Satyricon) is a must read. Set in the Bay of Naples, this tale about a wealthy but uncultured freedman who hosts a ridiculously lavish dinner party (Great Gatsby anyone?) offers great insight into the anxieties and cultural tensions of the first century AD. It also provides us with an interesting comparandum for the archaeological remains found in Pompeii and Herculaneum. For instance, the scene where the narrator is frightened by a wall painting of a fierce dog in the front hallway of Trimalchio's house reminds us of the famous "Cave Canem" mosaic in front of the House of the Tragic poet.

Source: Wikipedia Commons

At the dinner, one of the freedmen, Niceros, tells one of the neatest ghost (well, werewolf) stories ever told. I paraphrase it, trying to keep some of the drama:

"I was in love with the master's girl, Melissa, and we became pretty tight. But wouldn't you know it, her partner died out in the country and she went out there to mourn. I couldn't handle being away from her, so when the master went out to Capua to do this and that, I persuaded a soldier staying at our inn to join me on a venture out to the fifth milestone. The soldier was a buff one, strong as hell. So we leave the gates and enter the graveyard while the full moon shines above us. My companion heads off to take a piss among the tombs. I say a few spells to ward off the evil spirits and start counting the tombs. 

"Then I turned around, you know, and what did I see? The soldier had taken his clothes off and was pissing a ring around them. Then he became a wolf. Scared me shitless. He howled and then ran off into the woods. So I go up to his clothes, but they'd turned to stone! So I drew my sword and started hacking at every shadow around me. I bolted out of there and headed to my lady's house. 

"When I got there, lo and behold things were in a bit of chaos. Melissa says, 'I wish you'd gotten here earlier! A wolf got into our folds and killed everything in sight! But he didn't get away scot free. One of the slaves drove a spear through his neck.' Well, I wasn't gonna sleep that night, no siree. So as soon as the sun broke through I hustled back to the inn. When I passed by the tombs, the clothes were gone, nothing but blood. When I reached the inn, there was the soldier, in bed, near death, with a wound in his neck. Right then I knew he was one of those werewolf types."

This story is informative in a number of ways. First, it shows that tombs line the roads going out of town. It also shows that most people feel a bit of superstitious fear when traveling along these tombs. And it tells us that werewolves are nothing new.

Well, this week's big story is that one of the graveyards (or necropoleis, "cities of the dead") outside of Pompeii's Stabian Gate (bottom of map above) may be put up for auction and may fall into the hands of a private citizen. An 82 year old woman, Antonietta Nunziata, has taken legal action to auction off a parcel of her land on which two Roman tombs were recently excavated. Her complaint is as follows: a few years ago, the authorities at Pompeii claimed that the property containing the necropolis was subject to eminent domain and began the process of compensating her for the property. But the Soprintendenza has only paid 2/3 of the over 150,000 Euros it owes her, and on 11 July, the Tar (Tribunale Amministrativo Regionale) della Campania, ruled that the Soprintendenza had not completed the full process of appropriating the land and returned ownership back to Sig.ra. Nunziata, who is now contemplating putting the land up for auction because under the protection of antiquities laws, she is responsible for their upkeep. It has been reported that Sotheby's has been contacted.

An article about this legal battle can be found (in Italian) here and here. For an English summary, see here.

For a short introduction on the excavation on the Stabian Gate and the tombs outside, see this website from University of Cincinnati. For a picture of the tombs leading out of the Stabian Gate, see here.

Weekly Tidbit

An investigation prompted by illegal dumping of asbestos and other prohibited materials in Pompeii found that no case of asbestosis was caused by it. For the original report of the dumping (which included manslaughter, etc.), see this Italian article.

The Colosseum is now significantly covered in scaffolding. Visitors beware!

The Guardia di Finanza has discovered near Foggia a necropolis from the 10th-9th c. BC that contains numerous bronze implements. Again, the discovery is based on information gained from bootleggers and tomb robbers.

Major Etruscan Tomb Found

A slab that sealed the 2600-year-old tomb was untouched when archaeologists removed it.

Archaeologists have just unearthed a new tomb in Tarquinia. I noted this in the last post under "weekly tidbits," but because of the magnitude of the find (near the Royal Tombs) I thought I would highlight it and provide another (English) slideshow here.

Dating the Eruptions of Vesuvius and Thera

New technological tools (and new ways of thinking) now allow archaeologists and other researchers to discover things unimaginable just a few years ago.

If you look up the date of the eruption of Vesuvius, you will almost invariably find "Aug. 24–25" 79 AD. This is the traditional span of two days that most people accept, based on the dates provided for us by the eyewitness account of one Pliny the Younger. Pliny's story is a good one in and of itself. He decided to finish his homework rather than accompany his uncle (Pliny the Elder) in his fateful quest to investigate the natural disaster and to save the lives of others in the area. His account, written in letter form to the historian Tacitus, is remarkably vivid and gripping, and Pliny—unusual for him—offers up a date of the event.

New research, however, has essentially proven that the traditional date is mistaken. Dolia (large terracotta vessels) from the courtyard at the Villa Regina at Boscoreale were found to have contained wine and were sealed. Because of the location, it is likely that these dolia were not long-term storage, but had just been filled—an indication of a date in late autumn, after the harvest. Also, a coin found in 1974 but only studied in 2006 has raised more doubts; a denarius found in the House of the Gold Bracelet contains a title of the new emperor Titus, who took office on 23 June, 79 AD, that could only have been issued after the traditional date of the eruption. On it, there is the titulature "IMP XV" ("Hailed Triumphant General for the 15th time") which places the date after September of that year. The coin, however, is that it is hard to read and the identification is far from certain. Another point is that those who died in the eruption were wearing clothes more suitable for the late autumn months. Finally, a new, awesomely scientific article on the seasonal direction of trade winds suggests that if the eruption occurred between April and September, the direction of the ash would have gone north, and not south as in fact happened.

A good overview of the dating issue can be found in the following scholarly articles (thanks to Dora Vennarucci for suggesting the second two):

• G. Rolandi, A. Paone, M. Di Lascio, and G. Stefani, ‘The 79 AD Eruption of Somma: The Relationship Between the Date of the Eruption and the Southeast Tephra Dispersion,’ Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 169 (2007).
• Borgongino, M., Stefani, G., 2001. Intorno alla data dell'eruzione del 79 d.c. Rivista di Studi Pompeiani XII-XIII, 177-215.
• Stefani, G., 2006. La vera data dell'eruzione. Archeo. Attualita del passato XXII: 10-13.

Of course, Italian scholars have risen to defend Pliny and the traditional date. A study (summary here in English) of the contents of a jug full of remains of garum (a delicious fish-sauce much loved by the Romans) concludes that the fish that went into the sauce were most abundant in June-August. Because the state of the "boops boops" (the fish used) was in a pre-macerated phase, it is likely that the fish had just been jarred. But since the rate of decomposition has not been confirmed, this study is not entirely convincing. Paleobotanists also suggest that the pollens in Pompeii were typical of summer months.

This is an interesting case of how scholars of antiquity date events. One of the problems is that we are frequently bewitched by written texts that we are afraid to challenge them. In the case of Pliny's date above, when one looks at the manuscript tradition, one is immediately struck by the differences in the manuscripts (three other dates are found, all in different months). The items that are most likely to be corrupted in ancient texts (which, remember, were copied by hand until the invention of the Gutenberg printing press in the 15th century), in fact, are numbers and dates. We can in fact point to another place where Pliny's account is erroneous or corrupted. In a letter reporting the death of the daughter of one Fundanus (5.16), he gives her age as "almost fourteen," but we have an inscription (ILS 1030) that reports her age as 12 years, 11 months, and 7 days.

Now, researchers have apparently discovered a way to tell in which season the massive eruption of Thera (ancient Santorini) took place—the mighty bean weevil. Archaeologists studying the remains of sweet peas stored in an ancient jar discovered the insects and theorized—quite reasonably—that the window for this particular infestation was between June and early August. Radiocarbon dating also strengthened the traditional date of the eruption (around 1600 BC), which contributed greatly to the end of the Minoan Culture, offering a range from 1744–1538 BC (radiocarbon dating cannot be more precise).  Click here for a summary article from National Geographic, based on a more scientific treatment in the June edition of the journal Naturwissenschaften. For an excellent, rather short narrative on the eruption and the archaeological site of Akrotiri on Crete, see this Dartmouth website. For a smattering of wall paintings from Akrotiri, click here. The mighty eruption and the destruction of Thera has been claimed to be the origin of Plato's myth of Atlantis. Looking at this NASA view of the caldera formed by the explosive eruption, one can see why; what you see is the rim of the ancient volcanic cone.

Weekly Tidbits:

The Guardia di Finanza, investigating the activities of tombaroli (tomb robbers) in Lanuvio (ancient Lanuvium), stumbled upon a previously unknown archaeological site, where they found buildings in opus reticulatum, terracotta votive, glazed ware and coin. Here is an Italian article with footage of the find.

6th–5th century BC Etruscan tombs were found near Norchia of the "Casetta" type—long, connected rows of square tombs (rather than round, separate tombs).

In Tarquinia, an Etruscan tomb has been found entirely intact. See here for pictures.

Here's a blast from the past. I stumbled onto this NY Times article from 1899 discussing Giacomo Boni's excavations in the Forum. Neat stuff.

Pompeii Sustainable Preservation Project

Mount Vesuvius from Stabiae

The Classics program at UNH (where I work) has a close relationship with the Sustainability Institute, the mission of which is to create sustainable institutions that preserve important cultural traditions while ensuring that these traditions can continue through resource management, broadly conceived. The Sustainability Institute at UNH has the distinction of acknowledging the importance of the Humanities in this process. What, after all, are we sustaining but human culture and what we believe in? I have always been fascinated with the difficulties conducting the study of the past while not affecting the lives of those living today. How can we negotiate the twin aims of preserving the past and ensuring our continued thriving in the future?

Speaking of Sustainability, this past week it was announced that a consortium of German scholars and engineers are coming to the rescue of Pompeii's crumbling infrastructure, well, at least in part. The Technische Universität München (Munich) is teaming up with Fraunhofer di Stoccarda (the leading applied-research institute in Germany) and ICCROM (International Centre for the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property), to create the Pompeii Sustainable Preservation Project, a ten-year initiative to create a sustainable archaeological park. Part of the motivation comes from the recent big news of building and wall collapses, but the leader of the restoration section of Fraunhofer, Ralf Kilian, noted that ten years earlier he already felt that Pompeii's ruins were in bad shape. One of the principal goals of the PPSP (I feel like I'm whispering something secret when I write that acronym) is to create a major center for studying how to preserve an ancient site; further collaboration in this area comes from a group of universities from all over Europe (Oxford, Lmu Munich, DAI, Università Pisa). They are bringing with them an influx of 10 million Euros.

The twin goals of this project—to conserve Pompeii's buildings and to improve conservation methods through research—are to be applauded. In a blog in July I noted that Pompeii would do well to look to its sister town Herculaneum as a model for preserving the past. The initial phase of the PPSP will focus on a single insula (city block). Of primary importance will be improving drainage; lack thereof was the major cause of the fall of the Schola Armaturarum in November 2010. Work starts summer 2014. In 2015, a summer field school for conservation work is envisioned, one that can hold up to 510 students.

The project, however, does come as a sort of slap in the face of the Italian ministry of culture. Massimo Bray, the minister of Mibac, rearticulated Italy's commitment to preserving its own heritage, but, as one article put it, the Germans' capacity to get things done would cast in high relief the vast delays normally seen in Italian bureaucracies.

Read a little more here (in English) and here (in Italian).

Weekly Tidbits

Pompeii Online: Soon you won't have to leave your couch to visit Pompeii and the other sites covered in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Click this website, which has cool plans, pictures, and other items of interest. Only trouble? So far, it's only in Italian. Let's hope the English section is up and running soon.

If you're going to Rome in September, you should know that there are protests over the pedestrianization of the Via dei Fori Imperiali scheduled for 12–14 September. Article (in Italian) here.

A farmer plowing his fields came across several tombs in the area near Caserta (Piana di Monte Verna) and found a bowl made of impasto ware that dates to the Bronze Age. Archaeologists over the next days will be working to figure out the exact context of these finds. This Italian article gives an overview.