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New discovery reveals last moments of Pompeii’s middle class

<p dir="ltr">A series of new finds in Pompeii’s archaeological park have shed light on the final moments of middle class Romans before they were buried beneath volcanic ash and debris from Mount Vesuvius.</p> <p dir="ltr">Plates, glasses, vases, amphorae and terracotta objects left behind in chests and cabinets have been recovered from four rooms in a house that was first excavated in 2018.</p> <p dir="ltr">Gabriel Zuchtriegal, the director of the popular Italian tourist destination, said the discovery revealed precious details about the ordinary citizens of the city.</p> <p dir="ltr">“In the Roman Empire there was a significant proportion of the population which fought for their social status and for whom the ‘daily bread’ was anything but taken for granted. It was a social class that was vulnerable during political crises and famines, but also ambitious to climb the social ladder,” Dr Zuchtriegal <a href="http://pompeiisites.org/en/comunicati/the-discovery-of-furnishings-from-the-house-of-the-lararium-in-regio-v-a-snapshot-of-middle-class-pompeii/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">explained</a>.</p> <p dir="ltr">“In the House of the Lararium at Pompeii, the owner was able to embellish the courtyard with the lararium and the basin for the cistern with exceptional paintings, yet evidently funds were insufficient to decorate the five rooms of the house, one of which was used for storage. </p> <p dir="ltr">“In the other rooms, two on the upper floor which could be reached by a mezzanine, we have discovered an array of objects, some of which are made of precious materials such as bronze and glass, while others were for everyday use. The wooden furniture, of which it has been possible to make casts, was extremely simple. </p> <p dir="ltr">“We do not know who the inhabitants of the house were, but certainly the culture of otium (leisure) which inspired the wonderful decoration of the courtyard represented for them more a future they dreamed of than a lived reality.”</p> <p dir="ltr">In the rooms on the lower floor of the house, all of the furnishings were able to be recovered by creating casts of the furniture.</p> <p dir="ltr">One bedroom even contained the remains of a bed frame and trace fabric from the pillow, similar to three cot-like beds unearthed last year in another Pompeiian home believed to be slaves’ quarters. </p> <p dir="ltr">Next to the bed, archaeologists found a bipartite wooden chest that was left open when the owners fled. Although heavily damaged by beams that crashed onto it during the eruption, it still held an oil lamp decorated with a relief of the Greek god Zeus being transformed into an eagle.</p> <p dir="ltr">A small, three-legged table was found next to the trunk, with a ceramic cup containing glass ampules, and two small plates sitting on top.</p> <p dir="ltr">In the storeroom, they found a wooden cupboard with its backboard still intact and the shelves caved in.</p> <p dir="ltr">Many of the items from the upper floor were found in the rooms below, including everyday items such as ceramic vessels, two bronze jugs, a bronze bowl with a beaded base, and an incense burner in the shape of a cradle.</p> <p dir="ltr">One of the unique and most interesting finds was a small cast of waxed tablets, made up of seven triptychs (carvings with three panels) that have been tied together by a small cord.</p> <p><span id="docs-internal-guid-e3893194-7fff-a6cd-0f25-7ced2314fcef"></span></p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Images: Parco Archeologico di Pompei</em></p>

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Take a trip through an ancient home in Pompeii

<p dir="ltr">Archeologists have recreated a Pompeiian villa that was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E.</p> <p dir="ltr">Through the use of VR (virtual reality), researchers have carefully created a digital model of the ancient residence to better understand how visitors would have seen the home, according to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/reviewing-pompeian-domestic-space-through-combined-virtual-realitybased-eye-tracking-and-3d-gis/E82035C72C580D9602CCF00D625BC65D">the recently published paper in the </a><a href="https://www.artnews.com/t/archaeology/">archaeology</a> journal Antiquity.</p> <p dir="ltr">The villa, known as the House of the Epigrams, was excavated in the 1870s and so named because it contains mythical paintings accompanied by Greek epigrams.</p> <p dir="ltr">While the identity of the owner is impossible to determine, researchers have suggested it may have belonged to a Lucius Valerius Flaccus due to a signet ring bearing his sigil being discovered there.</p> <p dir="ltr">The paper, titled “Re-viewing Pompeian domestic space through combined virtual reality-based eye tracking and 3D GIS,” was written by PhD. candidate Danilo M. Campanaro and Professor Giacomo Landeschi, who are both affiliated with the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Lund University, Sweden.</p> <p><iframe title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9t39at8xgLw" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p> <p dir="ltr">Through extensive research, the authors of the paper have been able to determine what decorations to use in the recreation, as well as uncovering how the opulent villa would be viewed by residents of Pompeii of various social and economic classes. </p> <p dir="ltr">This recreation is the first of its kind in the studies of ancient Pompeii, with the research findings showcasing a different quality of life for locals before their city was destroyed. </p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image credits: YouTube</em></p>

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Pompeii’s ancient ruins guarded by a robot “dog”

<p dir="ltr">The Archaeological Park of Pompeii has found a unique way to patrol the historical archaeological areas and structures of Pompeii in Italy. </p> <p dir="ltr">Created by Boston Dynamics, a robot “dog” named Spot is being used to identify structural and safety issues at Pompeii: the ancient Roman city that was encased in volcanic ash following the 79 C.E. eruption of Mount Vesuvius.</p> <p dir="ltr">The robot is the latest addition to a broader initiative to transform Pompeii into a “Smart Archaeological Park” with “intelligent, sustainable and inclusive management.”</p> <p dir="ltr">The movement for this “integrated technological solution” began in 2013, when UNESCO threatened to remove the site from the World Heritage List unless drastic measures were taken to improve its preservation, after structural deficiencies started to emerge. </p> <p dir="ltr">The goal, as noted in the release, is to “improve both the quality of monitoring of the existing areas, and to further our knowledge of the state of progress of the works in areas undergoing recovery or restoration, and thereby to manage the safety of the site, as well as that of workers.”</p> <p dir="ltr">“We wish to test the use of these robots in the underground tunnels that were made by illegal excavators and which we are uncovering in the area around Pompeii, as part of a memorandum of understanding with the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Torre Annunziata,” said Pompeii’s director general Gabriel Zuchtriegel in a statement.</p> <p dir="ltr">In addition to having Spot the “dog” patrol the area, a laser scanner will also fly over the 163-acre site and record data, which will be used to study and plan further interventions to preserve the ancient ruins of Pompeii. </p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p>

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Archaeologists turn to robots to save Pompeii

<p dir="ltr">The city of Pompeii has experienced not one, but two deathly experiences - first from a volcanic eruption, then from neglect - and technology is now being used to keep it safe going into the future.</p> <p dir="ltr">Decades of neglect, mismanagement and scant maintenance of the popular ruins resulted in the 2010 collapse of a hall where gladiators once trained, nearly costing Pompeii its UNESCO World Heritage status.</p> <p dir="ltr">Despite this, Pompeii is facing a brighter future.</p> <p dir="ltr">The ruins were saved from further degradation due to the Great Pompeii Project, which saw about 105 million euros in European Union funds directed to the site, as long as it was spent promptly and effectively by 2016.</p> <p dir="ltr">Now, the Archaeological Park of Pompeii’s new director is looking to innovative technology to help restore areas of the ruins and reduce the impacts of a new threat: climate change.</p> <p dir="ltr">Archaeologist Gabriel Zuchtriegel, who was appointed director-general of the site in mid-2021, told the Associated Press that technology is essential “in this kind of battle against time”.</p> <p><span id="docs-internal-guid-95bf233a-7fff-da0a-2b03-4e06169e156c">“Some conditions are already changing and we can already measure this,” Zuchtriegel <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/pompeii-rebirth-of-italys-dead-city-that-nearly-died-again/XOOKT34VC3A6ZFG5BJLDC62FJI/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>.</span></p> <p><img src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/2022/02/pompeii1.jpg" alt="" width="1280" height="720" /></p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Archaeologists and scientists are joining forces to preserve and reconstruct artefacts found in Pompeii. Image: Pompeii Archeological Park (Instagram)</em></p> <p dir="ltr">So instead of relying on human eyes to detect signs of climate-caused deterioration on mosaic floors and frescoed walls across the site’s 10,000 excavated rooms, experts will rely on artificial intelligence (AI) and drones. </p> <p dir="ltr">The technology will provide experts with data and images in real-time, and will alert them to “take a closer look and eventually intervene before things happen”, Zuchtriegel said.</p> <p dir="ltr">Not only that, but AI and robots have been used to reassemble frescoes and artefacts that have crumbled into miniscule fragments that are difficult to reconstruct using human hands.</p> <p dir="ltr">“The amphorae, the frescoes, the mosaics are often brought to light fragmented, only partially intact or with many missing parts,” Zuchtriegel <a href="http://pompeiisites.org/comunicati/al-via-il-progetto-repair-la-robotica-e-la-digitalizzazione-al-servizio-dellarcheologia/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>.</p> <p dir="ltr">“When the number of fragments is very large, with thousands of pieces, manual reconstruction and recognition of the connections between the fragments is almost always impossible or in any case very laborious and slow.</p> <p><span id="docs-internal-guid-32168df9-7fff-f97f-2b16-a0c3c34e40be"></span></p> <p dir="ltr">“This means that various finds lie for a long time in archaeological deposits, without being able to be reconstructed and restored, let alone returned to the attention of the public.”</p> <p dir="ltr"><img src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/2022/02/pompeii2.jpg" alt="" width="1280" height="720" /></p> <p dir="ltr"><em>The robot uses mechanical arms and hands to position pieces in the right place. Image: Pompeii Archeological Park (Instagram)</em></p> <p dir="ltr">The “RePAIR” project, an acronym for Reconstructing the past: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics meet Cultural Heritage, has seen scientists from the Italian Institute of Technology create a robot to fix this problem.</p> <p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-2652855f-7fff-1a96-b469-dc8e29ac5886"></span></p> <p dir="ltr">It involves robots scanning the fragments and recognising them through a 3D digitisation system before placing them in the right position using mechanical arms and hands equipped with sensors.</p> <p dir="ltr"><img src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/2022/02/pompeii3.jpg" alt="" width="1280" height="720" /></p> <p dir="ltr"><em>The project will focus on frescoes in the House of the Painters at Work, which were shattered during WWII. Image: Pompeii Archeological Park (Instagram)</em></p> <p dir="ltr">One goal is to reconstruct the frescoed ceiling of the House of the Painters at Work, with was shattered by Allied bombing during World War II.</p> <p dir="ltr">The fresco in the Schola Armaturarum - the gladiators’ barracks - will also be the target of robotic repairs, after the weight of excavated sections of the city, rainfall accumulation and poor drainage resulted in the structure collapsing.</p> <p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-6dbfdf37-7fff-432f-0405-800c7e8da418"></span></p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image: Pompeii Archeological Park (Instagram)</em></p>

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