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The Dig
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InterviewI. Pompeii:How much have the ruins fallen into decay? Well, a lot of the decay has happened in the last 30 years or so. Initially, the kinds of damage that happened were related to the eruption of the volcano, Mount Vesuvius. Pompeii became covered with a layer of ash. In some areas there were different kinds of volcanic ash flows. There's a thing called a ground surge, that comes along the ground at incredibly high speeds, with poisonous gases. That can rip the tops off trees, take the roof off buildings. That's what happened to a villa in another area. But at Pompeii it was more of a direct fall of ash and pumice, some mud, so the buildings were not as damaged. Organic materials such as plants and animals were burned up by the heat, but generally the buildings were in pretty good shape. When they were uncovered, however, which started happening in the Renaissance, they usually just tunneled in, took a couple paintings off the wall with a hammer and chisel and left. In this century, as they excavate, there's not much they can do to stop the paintings from fading. This would have happened in the normal course of things back then anyway, but in that case, they would have had the artist there to come back and touch it up! But nowadays we're just losing things right and left. The archaeologists put roofs over what they've uncovered but that's not enough. What's special about Pompeii? The city as a whole? The fact that it preserves so carefully a single instant! Usually buildings gradually fall out of use, they're gradually abandoned, become ghost towns, or somebody builds over them. But in Pompeii, we have how things were in August of 79 AD, and that tells us a lot about what people were doing at any one time. We know they had an earthquake in 62 AD, so that 17-year time period particularly is well preserved because we see what they were trying to do to rebuild from the earthquake. We can see, in their homes, what each person chose to renovate first. That's really informative. To what extent can visitors visit the ruins? To a very great extent. Pompeii is one of the most popular archaeological sites. There are buses and trains down from Rome every day and you can get a pass to go into the ruins, and walk around basically the entire city. Not all the houses will be open on any given day, but probably more than half of the well-known excavated houses will be open every day. Some houses were just everyday homes, but others had impressive programs of paintings and mosaics. There are also baths, stadiums and temples that you can see. Did taking the class through your college program have anything to do with your getting in to see the ruins better? I guess we might have gotten to see a couple of houses that others might not, but no, in general we saw what everyone sees. It's more when you get into "backwoods" areas that you get in to things with our program. What did you think of the art? Amazing! I wish I could paint like that! Very impressionistic. They paid a lot of attention to the flowers and plants. Of course, some of the painters were better than others. There were some who would just draw pretty crudely, and there were different styles of painting as well. You've probably read about first, second, third and fourth style wall paintings in Pompeii, but there are different styles of wall decorations that started in the Republican period, and they had different fashions through the Augustan period and later. What impressed me the most was the megalographic art, which is artwork on a huge scale. Usually they'll have a wall painting that is about as big as your computer screen. It'll be very finely painted and gorgeous. That will be surrounded by the usual patterns that look like a wall. In the case of megalographic art, it'll take up the entire wall with enormous animals from a hunt or enormous people in some kind of ritual. In a couple of cases in Pompeii, we see that kind of art. back II. Rome:How much have the ruins fallen into decay? They've fallen into decay an enormous amount in most cases, and there's a variety of reasons for that. Rome went into a period of decline after it was conquered by barbarian invaders in the 5th century, and it had originally been built on a swampy area. So they had problems with malaria and just general swampiness! Their institutions of government also fell into decline, so it was hard to get the money to keep up the buildings. Also, there were some buildings that they didn't want to keep up. Now Rome was Christian, and having temples to gods that they not only didn't worship but believed might exist as some sort of demon or supernatural power that was opposed to the God people in the Judeo-Christian tradition believed in - they didn't want to have those temples around as a reminder of something they thought of as very dangerous and of a tradition that had really persecuted them in earlier years. So there were two choices for temples: they could either be transformed into Christian churches or torn down. If they were torn down, obviously, they fell into some pretty serious decay. But if they were transformed into a Christian church, that's where we have some of the best preservation of ancient buildings. At least the exterior of the building would be retained intact. The Pantheon became a Christian church, and that's why we have it intact today, although some of the Popes in the 16th century changed and removed some of the columns and took out the ceiling revetments that were metal because they needed them for some cannon! Other buildings were transformed into civic buildings. Some were used for building materials. And in some cases it wasn't just that people thought, "oh, we need building materials so we'll tear down an old Roman building!" The Colosseum, for example, is built across a line of geologic events; on one side the ground tends to sink, and on the other half of the Colosseum the ground is stable, so that's caused problems. That's why it looks like half of the Colosseum is falling down and the other half looks fine. Since one half did fall down, people thought, "hmn, these are useful blocks of stone laying on the ground," and they took them away and used them to build other things. Later on, one of the Popes decided to shore it up by building brick in place of the removed stone. So there are a lot of different things that contribute, whether it's just neglect, or a conscious program to take down the building. Sometimes, the Romans themselves, when they wanted to build a new building, wouldn't completely demolish an old building as we would today. Rather, they would just build on top of whatever was left of the old building. And that's happened a lot at Rome, so, if you dig down far enough, you'll find the remains of a lot of ancient buildings. What's special about Rome? The fact that the Romans put so much into the city because it was their capital means that the most interesting things will be at Rome. Also, it is fascinating to visit a city that is both so ancient and so continually inhabited, for the most part. How did it get ruined? By barbarians, by transformation of temples, and just by age. Rome was a scary place to live in the 14th century because there were bands of robbers that hung out on the plains to the north and south of Rome and attacked anyone who tried to visit, so anyone who tried to visit Rome would have to wait until they'd assembled a group of about 400 people before they could cross this area that was full of marauders! At that point, the Pope had moved the court to Avignon in France because Rome was in such bad shape. And since the Pope was a main reason for people to want to live in Rome, the city really went into decline. It had also been in decline in around 800 just because there were fewer people in the Dark Ages. To what extent can visitors get into the ruins? It really depends, building by building. Popular ruins like the Forum you can get into for free. Other major ruins, like the Colosseum or the Palatine Hill, which has a series of Imperial palaces on it, you have to pay a fee to enter. Other things are only open some days of the week, or are located in basements of churches, and you can get in just by asking the guy in charge of the building. There's also a series of really great museums where you can get in to see things collected from other sites. Did your taking the class have anything to do with getting into sites better? Definitely it did. In the city of Rome we saw some things that are very hard to get into. We saw some catacombs. We even got to see the Forum of Julius Caesar, which had not yet been opened to the public ever, and a couple of other things as well. What did you think of the art? In Rome, what's most obvious is the architecture and public sculpture. There's a really interesting exhibit of sculpture in the octagonal room of the Baths of Diocletian, which is right by the train station, and it's a part of the National Museum of Rome. They have a collection of bronze statues, which is the most valuable kind of statue, because that's what the original would have been. (A Greek original would have been in bronze, with copies generally in marble.) But definitely the architecture was the highlight. Things like the Arch of Titus, where you can still walk through this arch and see the sculpture inside that represented the Emperor's Triumph, are very impressive. back III. Fishbourne:How much have the ruins fallen into decay? They were hidden under farmland for hundreds and hundreds of years. Fishbourne is a more recent site than Pompeii, but it hasn't been continually inhabited like Rome. It got ruined in a fire, and after that it just gradually became buried. The mosaic flooring survived pretty well, and evidence of the plantings in the gardens has survived. Half of it has been dug up; parts of that were marred by the trench that was being dug for the waterworks. Generally it's in pretty decent shape compared with its condition after the fire. Some of the materials are charred, of course, and we have no idea about what shape the other half of the palace is in, because people are still living on top of it all! What's special about Fishbourne? I'd say the special thing about Fishbourne is seeing what the concept of being Roman was in the provinces. This was probably owned by a British chieftain, who was allowed by the Roman conquerors in Britain to maintain his power because he worked with them. There's evidence that the Fishbourne area had been used as a port for landing and deploying of supplies for the invasion. So, if he had been instrumental in making that area available, they would have seen fit to reward him pretty well. And so, to build this enormous palace that is unlike almost any other building in Britain at the time, that's his idea of what it means to be a Roman aristocrat. The garden is all laid out so that his clients, the people who depended on his political power for their success, can come and tell him what a great guy he is at his house, and it's set up with mosaics in Roman styles, occasionally with British patterns. It was renovated a couple of times, with more or less success. I guess the gardens that we see today are from a later time, but there were gardens in the original plans as well. It's interesting because in other provinces one often sees buildings from aristocrats who are actually Romans who, when ruling a foreign province, would set up a big set of landholdings there for themselves. Fishbourne actually shows a native of Britain who is building in the Roman style! Did your taking the class have anything to do with your access to the site? No! We didn't get that far afield. This was just a solo project; I found out when it was open and took public transport down there by myself. What did you think of the art? I thought the mosaics were really neat, but I was mostly interested in the garden. They have done a good job of making the garden accessible and trying to explain what kind of plants were there. Of all the sites in the Roman world, which one is most worth going to and why? That's a difficult question! For a city I'd say go to Rome, because even though the ruins are not as accessible as in Pompeii, and you don't get to see what the whole city would have looked like in one piece as in Ostia, Rome was the center of it all. Rome is where we can see how it's evolved through all the different stages; you can see Medieval and Renaissance and Modern buildings on top of the ancient buildings. It's been continually inhabited; it's where they put their most impressive monuments because it was the capital city. back
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