Raising the roof

ARCHAEOLOGRCHAEOLOGYDIGS AND DISCOVERIES FROM AROUND THE WORLD

August/Septem

ber 2010 . Issue 42

August/September 2010Issue 42 . £4.00

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WHAT LIES BENEATHThe Herculaneum Conservation Project is saving the city from a second catastrophe, and making fascinating new discoveries. First Domenico Camardo and Sarah Court lead us into the sewers, then they explore the rooftops of the ancient town with Mario Notomista.

Draining Herculaneum

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Should you be caught in a heavy rain storm in modern Ercolano, you will understand why the local residents talk about ‘lava’ flowing through the streets. The town sits at the foot of

Mount Vesuvius, directly in the path of the rain water as it streams down from the moun-tain to the sea.

The local community are all too aware of the volcano looming over them and can see parallels between the torrents of water and the

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lava that may one day inundate their town. The Mayor of Ercolano knows that the drains cannot cope with the amount of water that regularly falls, and has joked that their Roman archaeological site has a better drainage system than the modern town above. The Mayor’s comment is not just frivolous, recent work by the Herculaneum Conservation Project has meant that for the first time in almost 2,000 years the ancient Roman sewer system is ready to flow once more...

The Roman city of Herculaneum, which lies on the Bay of Naples in southern Italy, was buried by the eruption of AD 79 that destroyed Pompeii, Stabiae and other smaller settlements around Vesuvius. Excavation by tunnel started at Herculaneum in the 18th century, but the major campaign of open-air excavation took place under Amedeo Maiuri between 1927 and 1961. At the time, Herculaneum was an ahead-of-its-time experiment in excavation, restoration and presentation to the public, but after Maiuri’s departure, and with changes to the maintenance system, Herculaneum began to suffer.

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ITA LYVESUVIUSHERCULANEUM

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LEFT Exploring the enormous sewer system under Cardo V.

RIGHT Before water drainage works at Herculaneum, all the water from the modern and ancient towns used to flow down to the ancient shoreline flooding the area.

BELOW Rising damp can cause major damage to archaeological buildings. Salts crystallize on the surface of walls pushing delicate paint layers off a fresco.

Wet, wet, wetWater is one of the main problems for any archaeological site: both rain water and ground water. This is because most parts of an ancient site were originally interiors and never meant to be left exposed to the weather – delicate features like wall paintings would originally have been safely shielded by roofs. In addition, the owners are no longer around to take care of their homes, carrying out small repairs and DIY on the weekends to ensure that small problems do not grow into large liabilities.

When the Herculaneum Conservation Project team first arrived in 2001, many areas of the site filled with water every time it rained. Groundwater and the malfunctioning drainage system in modern Ercolano brought a steady seepage of water through the archaeological remains. This water damage made itself felt by eroding masonry and bringing salts out of walls – a sign of rising damp that is traumatic enough in your own home, but can be disastrous on an archaeological site. The problem has been tackled at Herculaneum thanks to the

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contribution of various specialists who have collaborated to restore the site and solve the underlying problem. To the archaeologists’ delight, this has brought about some exciting new discoveries.

When Vesuvius erupted the Roman city had an efficient system

of water drainage based on under-street sewers. An inspired suggestion for resolving Hercu-laneum’s water problem was to bring the network back into operation by excavating the ancient sewers and reopening the conduits that drained the individual houses.

Sewer ratsThe first sewer the team explored was under the Cardo III, one of the ancient town’s north-south roads. The channel is only just

big enough to crawl through (60cm wide and around a metre high), and unblocking a 200m

stretch was the kind of task that was once the preserve of slaves. The sewer runs straight until the road makes a sharp turn to gradually drop down to beach level. At that point the water in the channel plummeted down a vertical shaft to drain onto the foreshore. This snug sewer would have served the Forum Baths, one of the east-west roads and the houses that faced onto the Cardo III.

When the archaeologists studied the Cardo IV street they found drainage holes in the kerbstones suggesting that the water simply emptied onto the road. However, while working in the nearby House of the Mosaic Atrium they discovered the drainage channel for a latrine. This channel led under the road surface, confirming the presence of a sewer. Remote sensing has revealed that this sewer had similar dimensions to the one under the Cardo III.

It was the third of Herculaneum’s north-south roads that delivered the biggest surprise: a much larger tunnel – up to 3.6m in height – that runs under the Cardo V street along the entire length of the city block known as the Insula Orientalis II.

The Cardo V septic tank was investigated so that modern pipes could be installed. However, before any conservation work is carried out the archaeologists always check the situation in advance. On this occasion they landed the

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ABOVE The red lines show the Roman system that has been re-used by the Herculaneum Conservation Project for drainage.

BELOW Engineer Gianni Vercelli crawls through the Cardo III sewer.

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ABOVE Traces of the wooden shuttering used to build it are still visible in the sewer vault.

largest deposit of organic material from the Roman world – giving an unprec-edented insight into diet and health in ancient Herculaneum.

This 86m-long tunnel had been briefly explored in 1949, and seems to have been contemporary with the palaestra (a large public exercise complex) and shops occupying the street frontage. A second, wider, branch served to drain the palaestra’s cross-shaped pool. The sewer walls were built using a range of typical Roman masonry techniques, while the surface that the water ran on was cement.

Down the hatchChutes emptied into the sewer from the latrines and kitchens of the homes and shops above. A thick incrustation of organic material had collected where the toilet waste exited the chutes. This material has been sampled, and initial analyses have confirmed that it was human faeces, rich in vegetable fibres. One sample had a high white blood cell count, possibly indicating that its unfortunate source was suffering from a bacterial infection.

Once the monumental task of excavating the sewer was complete, it became clear that the

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THE HERCULANEUM CONSERVATION PROJECTWhy is such a project necessary? In 2000 about two thirds of the archaeological site was in danger of imminent collapse, while decorative features had become incredibly fragile. A year later the multidisciplinary Herculaneum Conservation Project was formed and immediately set about finding solutions, starting with an emergency campaign with the seemingly modest aim of simply stopping any more loss.

The team then turned their attention to understanding the root causes of the problems, so that instead of simply repairing damage they could limit the damage in the first place. The two articles here focus on tackling water-related problems, but this is just one aspect of the team’s work.

What has changed by 2010? The team has been working alongside colleagues from the heritage authority to ensure that we identify what the site needs and define its ‘continuous care’. The project has nearly come to an end, but it will hopefully leave a legacy of understanding that can be used by the local authorities to look after Herculaneum in the future. Securing this unique town has only been possible due to the exceptional commitment of the Packard Humanities Institute and the close collaboration of a team made up of specialists from the

heritage authority and around Italy (see p50). It is thanks to them that Herculaneum has been saved from succumbing to a second disaster, every bit as devastating as the first.

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ABOVE Amongst the finds from the septic tank: a lamp and a ring.

Excavation in the Cardo V sceptic tank.

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channel had no exit. Rather than draining into the sea, it was more like an enormous septic tank, collecting waste from the latrines, surplus food from the kitchens and sundry broken items that had outlived their shelf life. The slope of the channel resulted in the sediment building up in one side branch. At the time of the erup-tion this was more than 1.3m deep in slurry. The deposit was periodically emptied during the Roman period, with the sediment presum-ably used to fertilise fields. Mining this stinking underworld would have been an unimaginably awful task.

The deposit was carefully excavated so that the sediment and objects could be linked to the chutes that led down from the individual shops


and homes above. Discarded artefacts were found in horizontal positions with no signs of tumbling or erosion, confirming that there was not much movement in this particular sewer. There was also a clear concentration of finds around the down chutes, and in some cases the artefacts accumulated directly underneath them, forming a much thicker deposit.

The excavation yielded over 170 crates of finds – mostly pottery, including lamps which could often be entirely reconstructed. It seems that they were swept up and thrown away immediately after being broken. There were also many bronze objects, including three jugs, a lamp, a ring and more than 60 coins. The team also recovered worked bone pins, necklace beads and gems, and a gold ring with a decorated gemstone.

Ancient diets The richness of the organic deposit led to Mark Robinson, of the University of Oxford, being invited to analyse the material. In the first summer campaign he brought a team of students to wet sieve the sediment and study its contents. This revealed the remains of a diverse diet: eggshell fragments, poppy and fig seeds, olive pits, fish bones and scales, pig, sheep and bird bones, with a particular emphasis on chicken bones. More exotic offerings were represented by sea urchin spines and shells.

Larvae that usually live in grain were also discovered; presumably these had been eaten with bread. There were also the remains of the creatures that would have roamed these sewers, including mice and various insects.

While only preliminary analyses have been carried out on the sewer material, its potential is clear. This is yet another example of the great paradox of the Vesuvian eruption: while the human cost of this tragedy defies imagination, the devastation it wrought offers an unparal-leled opportunity to bring the ancient world back to life.

PAINTED LADY The Basilica Noniana lies half in and half out of Herculaneum’s western edge. When the conservation team’s attention turned to the Basilica, the first task was to clean up collapsed material that had crumbled from the escarpment onto the excavated part of the building. One of the workmen noticed a lock of red hair protruding from the volcanic material, and an Amazon statue head was discovered (see CWA 17). The head is remarkable for the excellent state of conservation of the pigments that decorate it. The beautiful detail of the eye reminds us that the blank stares familiar from Classical statues are just an accident of survival.

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ABOVE LEFT Oxford University students sort through the sewer deposits to identify organic remains.

ABOVE A mosaic receives Herculaneum Conservation Project care.


Raising the roof

The Herculaneum Conservation Project had a problem: how to deal with the water that flows down to what was originally the beach. The eruption pushed the

sea shore several hundred metres further out, so pipes needed to be cut through this mass of volcanic material in order that the water could be pumped out to the modern coastline. But before installing the pipes the archaeolo-gists were asked to check that nothing would be damaged. It seemed unlikely there would be much to find, as this part of the Roman beach was thoroughly dug in the 1980s. But, to everyone’s astonishment, the archaeologists uncovered a complete wooden roof brought crashing down by the mighty force of the Vesuvian eruption.

Timber!The roof lay in a corner of the beach that had not been completely examined during the earlier campaign. The team had to remove about a metre of volcanic deposits before the

roof was exposed, still lying on the black sand of the beach.

Massive wooden beams up to 7m long, along with smaller timbers and rafters, were the first elements to be uncovered. These lay on top of the tiles that would originally have covered the roof, revealing that it had been flipped

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ABOVE Work underway to prepare the ancient shoreline for a water drainage system.

BELOW Archaeologists carefully excavate the roof structure.

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upside down by the brute force of the eruption. Carpentry marks were visible on many of the pieces and the joints were beautifully preserved. Despite the monumental size and weight of the timbers, not one nail was used and only a few iron cramps were recovered. The shape and angle of the roof joints indicate that it was prob-ably a pitched roof supported by trusses.

The position of the roof is such that it must have been plucked from the ornate Marble Room in the House of the Relief of Telephus. The glorious cut marble decoration gracing this chamber is judged to be one of the finest examples surviving from the Roman world.

The most exciting finds amongst the debris were the wooden panels that decorated the ceiling of the Marble Room. These panels were not only interwoven with ornate shapes but also had traces of their original multicoloured paints. Although at this stage in the research


it is not yet possible to reconstruct the whole ceiling, one possibility is that the shapes of the decorative panels mirrored the complex patterns of the room’s marble floor. One set of panels was decorated with wooden floral patterns and coloured with white, black, blue and red pigments.

Understanding the eruptionLike so much of the remarkable organic mate-rial that has survived intact at Herculaneum, the roof owed its preservation to the specific circumstances of the Vesuvian eruption. Indeed, study of the roof timbers has provided new insights into the very nature of the erup-tion itself.

During the excavation, the team noticed that the pieces of the wood seemed to be covered by two different layers of volcanic material. One of these was a harder yellow material, containing wood that was completely carbonized, creating the charred preservation for which Hercula-neum is so famous. But beneath this was a lower layer of softer grey material containing wood that was not burnt in any way.

The project geologists have theorised from this that the carbonization of Herculaneum’s organic materials did not take place at the time of the eruption as has always been assumed to be the case, but afterwards. This interpretation seems to be supported by the discovery that some wooden beams were partly covered by the yellow layer and partly

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ABOVE Looking down on the collapsed roof from the House of the Relief of Telephus, where the roof once stood.

ABOVE RIGHT One of the decorated roof panels.

BELOW The roof tiles appear underneath the wooden roof timbers.

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by the grey – in these cases, only the end that was in contact with the yellow volcanic mate-rial was carbonized. This suggests that when the roof fell down onto the beach the wood wasn’t yet carbonized, and this only started for those pieces that were covered by a second flow of volcanic material.

The roof was recorded by a laser scanner so that a three-dimensional model could be made, allowing its construction to be modeled. The remains were then lifted and conservation specialists are monitoring them to ensure that the timbers remain in good condition until a permanent home is found for them.

After the drainage works on the ancient shoreline are completed, the plan is to restore


SOURCEDomenico Camardo is the Herculaneum Conservation Project archaeologist and, with his assistant Mario Notomista, contributes to the multidisciplinary conservation work at Herculaneum. Sarah Court is the project‘s archaeologist responsible for sharing information with and involving the local community, heritage professionals, scholars and visitors.

HERCULANEUM CENTREErcolano is more than just a Roman archaeological site. The area includes 18th-century Vesuvian villas, the historic centre of Resina, and, of course, the natural beauty of both the volcano and the sea. The Herculaneum Centre has been created to promote the widest possible engagement with the area’s unique heritage, so that both local and international communities contribute to its conservation. This ranges from encouraging school children to engage with the archaeology, to interviewing residents who witnessed the 1944 eruption of Vesuvius, or who participated in the excavations of the archaeological site, under the directorship of Amedeo Maiuri.

The Centre is the work of three partners: the town council, the heritage authority and the British School at Rome. Together we organise various events, run internships that allow young scholars a taste of this remarkable area, host conferences and workshops, and ensure that Herculaneum has the profile it deserves. So far, we have brought together people from 58 countries around the world. It is our mission to ensure that all of you want to support our wonderful heritage, because that is the only way to ensure its long-term survival.

If you want to know more about Herculaneum – and especially if you’re coming to visit – then do get in touch: [email protected] or find us on Facebook.

the area to the 1st-century levels so that you can stroll along the Roman beachfront

and get a feel for this important aspect of Herculaneum. A new display will feature replicas of the skeletons of the last people to see the beach in its original form. These huddled groups were found shel-

tering in vain in the storerooms on the seafront. Perhaps they even saw the roof

of the House of the Relief of Telephus come crashing down before they, too, passed into

the archaeological record.

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Massive wooden beams lay on top of the tiles

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BELOW A loaf of bread that was carbonized by the Vesuivan volcanic eruption of AD 79.

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Veteran excavators share their memories of the Maiuri campaign.

Raising the roof

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