Taking a Roman Art survey class this term I have become facscinated by the abundance and quality of Roman art and engineering. Having written my term paper on the aqueducts of ancient Rome - truly fascinating stuff - I decided to see if I could locate any of their remains using GoogleEarth. After much searching I did find one arcade section of the Aqua Marcia outside Rome. Nevertheless, in searching process I realized that I had never looked at Pompeii with GoogleEarth. Looking at Pompeii this way I have come up with several questions:
Why is so much of Pompeii unexcavated? I knew large portions were still unearthed, but not that it was so large an area. What are the future plans of the site?
It is rather densely populated in the areas surrounding Pompeii. Are there any long-term plans to clear this land and excavate? (Obviously, there are precious gems buried there!) Is there any government policy to prohibit further encroachment on the area?
The buildings there with their roofs intact; were they unearthed intact or reconstructed? If they were discovered intact, what accounts for the large portions of the city without any surviving roof structures? (Or is that just the way the ash fell?)
Who is responsible for Pompeii? Is it municipal, provincial, state; or been given to an academic institution? Who funds Pompeii?
Do we take Pompeii, as a Roman city, to be representative of all Roman cities? That is, do we take the model of Pompeii (grid plan of intersecting streets, domestic housing structures, baths, forum, etc) as the model type of Roman urban planning? More importantly, is it representative? Do other archeological sites mirror the “ideal” of Pompeii as an urban Roman centre?
I can’t answer all those, but I know a couple of them.
As soon as a section is excavated it begins to decay. They’ve wisely taken their time about doing the excavations – new techniques to study and preserve items have been developed in the past decades that would have added enormously to areas already excavated. (An example, already old – you’ve seen the casts of dead people and animals made by pouring plaster into the cavities in the hardened ash. Back around 1964 John Glenn, visiting Pompeii, suggested using transparent resins instead. These would allow bones and jewlry to be seen. I don’t know if they ever followed up on this.) A map pf Pompeii shows a surprising amount still unearthed.
There are many preserved Roman towns, although Pompeii and Herculaneum are very well preserved. But Ostia, the port of Rome, was preserved by being silted up. Glanum, a town in Southern France, was preserved by, I think, just being igbnored until it was buried by normal geologic action. All four show the pattern of streets, houses, theaters, marketplace, etc. I’m sure there are other towns. So we don’t need to assume Pompeii is typical – there are other examples to compare it against.
I think most of the roofs are reconstructed, but I don’t know for sure. At Herculaneum the city was buried under a river of mud, rather than under falling ash. I’ll bet there are preserved roofs there. At Pompeii there are hanging oscillae around the perimeter of the open courtyards. You know the strings and chains haven’t survived since antiquity – a lot of stuff has been restored, although not obtrusively.
You don’t really need intact cities to figure out the urban organization of Roman cities. Archeological searches even in cities still inhabited reveal quite a lot. For instance, the urban structure of Lutetia (former name of Paris) is well known, despite the fact that the area has been built and rebuilt on for centuries.
And generally, yes, roman cities tended to be build following a similar pattern (grid plan, etc…)
I have more of a question than an answer, because these things have been eating at me, too:
Why doesn’t someone build a roof and even walls over/around Pompeii to preserve it from the elements?
I really wondered the same thing at the ruins on Crete - all this priceless architecture, including frescoes, being worn down year after year when you could throw up a sheet-metal warehouse around the whole thing and have it last so much longer. I know it would be expensive, but it seems like people from many countries would be willing to pitch in. Is there a preservation reason for it?