Bread & Circuses

Hero of Herculaneum on the Smithsonian Channel

If you are in the US you can see "Hero of Herculaneum", a documentary I worked on last year, on Sunday at 2100 on the Smithsonian Channel. A preview can be seen here.

 

 

Staff shortages at Herculaneum

Depressing news from Herculaneum. The staff shortages are starting to bite. Visitors have given up seeing the Suburban Baths and even the boat museum, but the whole site was closed on Monday:

The ancient site of Herculaneum near Pompeii in southern Italy was shut to the public Monday afternoon because of a staff shortage that officials blamed on understaffing. The Superintendent for Cultural Heritage responsible for the sites at Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabia said in a statement that the closure "highlights the critical situation...at Mt. Vesuvius archaeological sites".

The full story from the Gazetta del Sud. There is also a heartfelt op-ed piece in Il Mattino:

“Ercolano sta ancora in piedi, così come Pompei, perché è lo spirito santo che lo vuole”. Queste le amare parole di alcuni addetti ai lavori del sito vesuviano mentre raccontano di mancanza di personale sufficiente a sorvegliare pochi ma significativi luoghi “simbolo” dell’area archeologica, oggi off-limits per i molti turisti che arrivano.

You can read it here. It is accompanied by a good video piece.

 

The Hero of Herculaneum online

For the next week, a documentary I worked on last year - The Hero of Herculaneum - part of the Mummies Alive series is available to watch online. You can see it here.

The Hero of Herculaneum

For those in the UK, a documentary I worked on last year - The Hero of Herculaneum - part of the Mummies Alive series is on, on Monday 8 June at 2100. Enjoy.

Vesuvius and Calbuco

Pliny is all well and good, but I confess that I have always found it difficult to visualise what it must have been like to watch Vesuvius erupt. There are, of course, the news reports of Vesuvius in 1944 (this Pathé report is splendid) but the fact that it is in black and white distances.

The current eruption of Calbuco in southern Chile brings it home rather forcefully. The photographs in this Independent report show exactly what a blanket of ash looks like: the boat half buried in the town of Ensenada (Reuters) is reminiscent of the boat found in Herculaneum, and it is not difficult to look at the buried entrance of a house in Puerto Varas (AP) and see Pompeii. And any doubts about Pliny's description of an umbrella pine are dashed by the images in this CNN report.

 

The Eruption of Vesuvius

Via Vesuvio Live, a brilliant video produced by Melbourne Museum that shows how Vesuvius erupted and how it destroyed Pompeii in August AD79. Well-worth a look:

 

Scrolls from the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum

There has been a great deal of excitement about the news yesterday that a new technique might help scholars reads the carbonised scrolls from the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum. I thought it worthwhile pulling together the better articles.

The article with the nuts and bolts of the research is "Revealing letters in rolled Herculaneum papyri by X-ray phase-contrast imaging" in Nature Communications.

There is a good summary of the research at Nature.com by Richard Van Noorden in "X-rays reveal words in Vesuvius-baked scrolls". Reuters and National Geographic are good.

More general perspectives are given in the New York Times and Independent. The Guardian is also worth a look for the video below. 

 

The Roman Boat in Herculaneum

It is worth flagging up this article mentioned by the always-brilliant Blogging Pompeii about the wooden boat found on the shore of Herculaneum. It must be one of the most ill-fated ships ever. It appears not to have been seaworthy at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79 and since its discovery has been sadly neglected in a beautiful, yet closed museum (a rival for the Museum für Antike Schiffahrt des RGZM, Mainz), and distinctly under-published. The blog post is here and the article itself is here. Pictures below are from my recent trip.

 

Filming in Herculaneum

Apologies that posts have been thin on the ground recently, but those who follow me on Twitter will have seen a number of posts recently from Herculaneum, the city destroyed by Vesuvius in AD79. I was fortunate enough to be there to film an episode of Mummies Alive with the brilliant Mick Grogan of Saloon Media for History/Smithsonian/Yesterday and ZDF. The episode is focused on the remains of the soldier/sailor found just in front of the boat sheds on what was the shoreline by the ancient city. Photos by co-presenter, the geologist Dougal Jerram.