HSC Ancient History Assessment Task 1. Core Topic: Cities of Vesuvius Pompeii and Herculaneum. Source Booklet

Transcription

1 HSC Ancient History Assessment Task 1 Core Topic: Cities of Vesuvius Pompeii and Herculaneum Source Booklet Source A: Page 1 Source B: Page 1 Source C: Page 2 Source D: Page 2 Source E: Page 3 Source F: Page 3 Source G: Page 4

2 Source A- A business in Pompeii Source B Fresco of "The Amphitheatre at Pompeii, depicting the riot between the Nucerians and the Pompeians" 1

3 Source C Actors with masks Source D - Garum Mosaic 2

4 Source E - Building at Herculaneum Source F - An extract from Mary Beard Pompeii, The Life of Roman Town, 2008 There is an old archaeological joke that Pompeii has died twice: first, the sudden death caused by the eruption; second the slow death that the city has suffered since it began to be uncovered in the mid eighteenth century. Any visit to the site will show exactly what that second death means. Despite the heroic efforts of the Pompeian archaeological service, the city is disintegrating, weeds overgrow many of the areas that are off-limits to visitors, some of the once brilliantly coloured paintings left in place on the walls have faded to almost nothing. It is a gradual process of dilapidation, aggravated by earthquakes and mass tourism, and given an extra helping hand by the rough methods of the early excavators; by Allied bombing campaigns in 1943 which wrecked several areas of the town; and by thieves and vandals, for whom the archaeological site, large and hard to police, is an enticing target). 3

5 Source G - Extract from World Archeology, What s new in Pompeii, January Digital revolution Photography and computer reconstruction of images is playing an important part in the Oplontis Project, at the Villa of Poppaea, a couple of miles outside Pompeii. The international multidisciplinary team, led by John R Clarke and Michael L Thomas of the University of Texas at Austin has created a fully navigable 3D model and reconstruction of the villa. Archival photographs from the villa s initial excavation and reconstruction in the period from have proved essential for the Oplontis Project s reconstruction, but they have also brought home with terrible clarity how severe the deterioration of the villa s wall-paintings has been over the last decades. The project has found a positive use for these photos, however, using them to reconstruct paintings for the digital reconstruction. Clarke believes that with every year that passes, valuable evidence disappears. Our careful and systematic work in the villa will document this endangered resource. Their model will not only be the first completely accurate record of the actual state of the villa, it will also digitally preserve this monument for future generations. Many Italian universities are active in the Vesuvian area. The University of Bologna s Vesuviana Project is a multiple-strand research project for Pompeii and Herculaneum. At Pompeii, its focus is the Insula of the Centenary (IX.8) first excavated in 1879, exactly 1,800 years after it was destroyed by Vesuvius. The insula has been studied not just by archaeologists and art historians, but by geologists, structural engineers, chemists, IT specialists, and conservators. Their use of archival material usually drawn illustrations to find out exactly what was revealed in the original excavations, and which is then combined with information from new surveys and virtual reconstructions, has been the key, like the Oplontis Project, to integrating a range of evidence to further our understanding of Roman houses. High-tech equipment is a frequent sight at Pompeii these days, not least because it speeds up the recording process and allows data to be more easily manipulated. In 2010, the Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia (PARP:PS), based at the University of Cincinnati, went completely digital in their excavations. For the first time ipads were used to complete all the usual form-filling related to a dig, as well as all the technical drawings, stratigraphic diagrams, and excavation notebooks. Not only was information gathered more quickly, but it could be distributed almost immediately among the experts working on the project instead of awaiting costly post-excavation digitisation. And at the same time, the project has funded the reconstruction of many failing walls in the area of its excavations another sign of the commitment that today s archaeologists have towards the conservation of Pompeii. 4