Expert: Maria - 1/11/2008

Question
Dear Maria,
This may or may not be a subject within your professional experience but I could not find archeology as a separate category.
I have once again been reviewing some literature regarding the findings at Pompeii and Herculaneum and still have a problem understanding a rather mundane aspect of the efforts made there to unearth buildings and artifacts.  The many surfaces, individual artistic items, frescoes, and so on seem to be in remarkably good condition and I wonder; How could the ash, etc. have been removed without damaging the underlying surfaces?  The solidified mass is often referred to as being like concrete so it's hard for me to imagine removing concrete from most of the recovered items without resorting to extremely aggressive techniques.  Is it possible that the aggregate that smothered the cities is not as dense or as hard as has been described?  Thank you in advance, Jim Starnes

Answer
Dear Jim,

as far as I know, being  not an archaeologist, the excavations at Pompeii which began in the first half of the 18th.century were less  difficult as expected,  because the  debris was light and not so compacted as it was mixed with many tons of pumice and volcanic ashes which in a way protected surfaces, individual artistic items, frescoes, buildings from the lava which  buried Pompeii in A.D. 79 and eventually covered many of dead who had been encased in a slurry of ashes, lapilli  and rain.

So, when the ashes dried hard and the bodies turned to dust, leaving cavities in the thick layer of volcanic material, the lava conserved the shape of the bodies so that in  1861 the  archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli could pour liquid plaster into the cavities and then reproduce the images of the victims, frozen in the last moments of their lives (the so called “ human casts”).

I must however point out that, while Pompeii was buried mostly by ashes and lapilli, Herculaneum was buried by a sea of mud  and volcanic materials which was hardened to form a solid rock of tuff. Here in fact the excavations were, and are still today,very hard.

To conclude, I'm sorry, but I cannot tell you more, except that you could look for an archaeologist who should be able to give you more information about the techniques employed in  archaeological excavations at Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis and Stabiae.

See at:
http://www.allexperts.com/el/Archaeology/Knowledge/

Best regards,
Maria