It is just the sort of pack that I’d have wanted as a child: books, models, maps, fact cards and a CD of clipart. I mention it on this blog because one of the books has a section on Herculaneum thanks to a contribution by the Herculaneum Conservation Project. I’ve added some sample page layouts below.

Herculaneum’s Samnite House is open for visitors again. The house was shut for a period as water leaking through the roof had damaged not only the roof structure but also wall and floor decorations. The Herculaneum Conservation Project team made repairs to the atrium roof and substituted the (modern) flat roof over the tablinum. Emergency works were carried out on the wall and floor decorations.

However, please note that only the minimum was done to ensure the house’s preservation and visitor safety – but the house is still fragile and we need your help when you visit! Three ways you can help save the site:

1. the first style wall decorations in the entrance are scratched by visitors’ backpacks – if you’re taking a group round, please point out this feature once they are already inside the atrium to avoid them all turning to look in the narrow space and damaging the wall behind them.

2. in fact, why carry a heavy backpack around the site? Especially now the weather is heating up – why not leave all unnecessary bags at the new ticket office, where the superintendency has a free luggage deposit.

3. please don’t sit down on the small wall that divides the atrium from the tablinum. Already in the few days since the house has reopened the wall has started crumbling from visitors’ bottoms! Please think before you sit anywhere in the site – maybe one person won’t make a noticeable difference but we got over 25,000 visitors just last month – and 25,000 people sitting on the same 2,000 year old wall does make a difference! If you need a rest break, think about sitting someone a bit more robust – or going back to the ticket office where there is the new park with benches, a perfect area to rest in a green area before returning to your visit.

One of the current areas we are working in is the House of Neptune and Amphitrite – again a leaking modern roof and rising damp is causing damage to the amazing decorations in this house. The conservation team are trying to carry out as much work as possible without causing too much disturbance (currently we’ve blocked off half the atrium but you can still see the triclinium with the famous mosaic) – but at a certain point we’re going to have to close the whole house for a period in order to substitute the roof over the triclinium. Sorry!
This may cause problems if you’re visiting at that time, but hopefully you’ll agree that in the long term we’d all prefer to know that the Neptune and Amphitrite mosaic and the nymphaeum there are preserved for a bit longer.

Pavimenti a Ercolano
di Maria Stella Pisapia
giovedì 8 aprile 2010 ore 15.30: Ercolano, Scavi
Per informazioni e prenotazioni 081 4422149

This is just one of a cycle of events organised by the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. For more on the Incontri di Archeologia see their website.

The next event of interest to blog readers will be:

Note di vita pompeiana attraverso i Giornali di Scavo
di Vincenzina Castiglione Morelli
giovedì 29 aprile 2010 ore 15: Napoli, Museo Archeologico
Per informazioni e prenotazioni 081 4422149

Mary Beard’s latest post for A Don’s Life mentions her recent visit to Herculaneum’s sewers (sorry that I gave the game away Mary!)

The Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum: Archaeology, Reception and Digital Reconstruction (Sozomena Studies in the Recovery of Ancient Texts) by Mantha Zarmakoupi (Freie Universitat Berlin) (Llh, 2010) $152.00.

The Villa of the Papyri is a unique archaeological site and has been very influential in the field of classical studies. The papyri (the only intact library to survive from Graeco-Roman antiquity) and bronze sculptures found in the villa have contributed to our knowledge of the ancient world and the Villa has become for us the ‘ideal model’ of Roman luxury villa culture. This volume presents contributions on the Villa’s architecture, decoration, and content (i.e., wall-paintings, sculptures, and papyri); their reception since the 18th century; the current state of knowledge based on the recent partial excavations in the Villa; the use of digital models of the Villa, and a discussion on the ways in which such models may be used for educational and research purposes.

Well, hardly spotted as I was helping make sure that things worked out for them at Herculaneum, but couldn’t resist blogging about a fellow blogger. You can follow Mary’s time filming in the Vesuvian area all this week on her blog A Don’s Life, and the BBC should be showing the new documentary in late autumn in the UK at least.

At least one of the programme’s themes seems to be toilets in the Roman world, which explains these photos of the team descending into Herculaneum’s largest sewer. Other highlights include Andrew and Mary reenacting how to use a double latrine…

As in any project, we have found archive photos to be an enormous resource for understanding more about the archaeology. But not only: we have increasingly found that people’s old holiday photos of Herculaneum offer us a whole range of views of the site and its condition over time. We have been lucky enough to gather photos from different sources that have shown us the conditions of parts of site when they were freshly excavated, but also conditions when the site was in its worst state of decay. All this information can help inform us when making conservation decisions.

If there are any blog readers who have photos of Herculaneum (ancient and modern!) – particularly if they date to pre-2000 – and would be happy to send us copies, we would be very grateful. We will ensure that they are stored in our database along with the photographer’s name (and the year if you can give it to us).

Please send your old Herculaneum photos to hcp[at]herculaneum.org

Thank you all!

The programme includes talks by the new Director of the British School at Rome, Prof. Christopher Smith, and by the immediate past Director, Prof. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill; presentations by members of the Herculaneum Conservation project; site visit (including the Villa of the Papyri and the new boat museum) with Dr Maria Paola Guidobaldi, Director of Excavations, and Dr Domenico Camardo; an excursion up the slopes of Vesuvius; and a visit to Stabiae with Prof. Thomas Howe, Director of the Restoring Ancient Stabiae project.

The conference fee is £150 (£120 concessions) which includes all entrance fees and talks, welcome reception on Friday, dinner Fri/Sat and lunch Sat/Sun. Delegates need to arrange their own return transportation to Ercolano and accommodation; we have secured favourable rates at the new 4-star Miglio D’Oro hotel in Ercolano, and B&B accommodation is available to those who prefer it.

Delegates need to members of the Society; subscriptions start at £15 (concessions). For further information about the Society please visit http://www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk/; for further details about the meeting please e-mail: herculaneum@classics.ox.ac.uk.

Please note that places are limited and we ask that people register by 16 April.

Bob Fowler
For the Trustees