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| Pompeii |
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| Pompeii |
The excavations at Pompeii began with a dig to look for art objects that could be placed in the private collection of the Bourbon King Charles III. Any thing that was deemed to fall into this category was moved and had remained in Naples to this day in the Museo Nazionale.
After this event archeologist after archeologist went in to uncover parts of Pompeii including: Karl Weber, Francesco La Vega, Bourbon King Ferdinand I, Giuseppe Fiorelli, and many more to this day.
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| Giuseppe Fiorelli |
Previous to Fiorelli taking over the dig, places were excavated by a specific plan where the streets were excavated first and then the houses were cleared out from bottom to top, and any paintings or mosaics were torn down and moved to museums. However Fiorelli came up with a new plan to instead excavate from the roof down into the building and out to the streets. This kept the artifacts inside and even the houses themselves in better shape than they had remained from previous digs. He put this plan into motion and then added a second part, since the bodies had been preserved in the ash he came up with adding the plaster into the holes where bodies were found to create a replica of the person. Not only did this make an accurate cast of the victim and the place and manner they died but it also left the space they died mostly intact leaving both a positive and negative of the event. This also made it so more casts could be made the casts could be shipped all over to museums so people from all over could see the aftermath of such an event and get a look at life in Pompeii at the time.
After Fiorelli the archeologists that took over kept up his way of excavating and even went a step further to restore the roofs of the houses as they dug to keep anything that may be inside safe. The paintings, mosaics and other artifacts inside would remain safer than before and were even left on the walls instead of being torn down to add to museum collections as they were before. The next few archeologists also started placing the art that was unearthed into different categories or styles, then they were able to start drawing up reconstructions of what these houses would have looked like in antiquity, and then reconstruct the front, roof and even porch of the houses not only to help keep them standing but it in the end even helped them excavate better knowing what they were looking for under all the ash and pumice.
It is impressive that these buildings are standing at all after all they have been through, being that when they were built they should have only lasted a few decades with what would have been some pretty decent upkeep. Yet here they are all this time later not only still standing but only about three fifths of the way uncovered and have over two billion visitors every year in the parts that are unearthed. More recently excavations have been opened up and while you can’t just go digging till your hearts content you can watch as a team of archeologists work on what is known as the House of the Chaste Lovers and unearth its secrets. This building till know has been closed to the public until recently even though it began being unearthed in the late 1980’s.
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| House of the Chaste Lovers open dig. |
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| Casts of some of the Victims |
While this blog is meant to illustrate the problems that arose in early digs through their images this dig is a good example of changes in the way things were done for better preservation. Not only was the entire style of the dig changed by going from top to bottom instead of bottom to top of the rubble but they re enforced roofs to keep anything remaining inside safe until they could get in to work inside the houses. It was this dig that also had Fiorelli come up with injecting plaster into the graves of the victims to get a recreation of what happened. Not only did this help for preservation but also it was a giant leap forward into seeing what life in the Roman Empire would have looked like. This was the first time that such an accurate image of life would have looked like at that time, where it was not destroyed by war or overtaken by a new set of people. Instead a look at what people would have been doing in their final days. So while the techniques are not what they are today on the earlier digs many breakthroughs happened along the way, and now since it is still being dug out it shows a time line of how things were done not only now but all the way back to when they begun. The start of this site was for personal wealth by what people would now term as someone who is a gravedigger all the way up to current digs where you can now sit and watch as it is brought out of the ash and pumice right in front of your very eyes.
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| Early Digs |
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| Current Digs |
Works Cited:
Google Images
Previous to Fiorelli taking over the dig, places were excavated by a specific plan where the streets were excavated first and then the houses were cleared out from bottom to top, and any paintings or mosaics were torn down and moved to museums. However Fiorelli came up with a new plan to instead excavate from the roof down into the building and out to the streets. This kept the artifacts inside and even the houses themselves in better shape than they had remained from previous digs. He put this plan into motion and then added a second part, since the bodies had been preserved in the ash he came up with adding the plaster into the holes where bodies were found to create a replica of the person. Not only did this make an accurate cast of the victim and the place and manner they died but it also left the space they died mostly intact leaving both a positive and negative of the event. This also made it so more casts could be made the casts could be shipped all over to museums so people from all over could see the aftermath of such an event and get a look at life in Pompeii at the time.
After Fiorelli the archeologists that took over kept up his way of excavating and even went a step further to restore the roofs of the houses as they dug to keep anything that may be inside safe. The paintings, mosaics and other artifacts inside would remain safer than before and were even left on the walls instead of being torn down to add to museum collections as they were before. The next few archeologists also started placing the art that was unearthed into different categories or styles, then they were able to start drawing up reconstructions of what these houses would have looked like in antiquity, and then reconstruct the front, roof and even porch of the houses not only to help keep them standing but it in the end even helped them excavate better knowing what they were looking for under all the ash and pumice. 
