Second+death+of+Pompeii

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 * The Second Death of Pompeii **


 * Henri de Saint‑Blanquat, //Science et Avenir//, no. 469, March 1986**

//What Vesuvius spared in AD 79, men are now in the process of destroying. The Italian government has blocked the 36 million lire earmarked by the European Community in 1984 for the restoration of Pompeii. Vegetation, damp, vandalism and hordes of tourists are finishing off the ghost town. It is an archaeological tragedy of the first order.//

Pompeii, Easter 1979: there is a vast crowd of tourists. Amongst the buildings stands a private house not open to the public, where, in the atrium, or inner courtyard, the stone columns are still standing. It is impossible to keep an eye on everyone. Some of the tourists find their way into the courtyard and, by way of a game, start to push against the columns. Eventually they succeed in knocking them down. ‘Fun’ like this is apparently quite common. Indeed, it is reported that there are even competitions to see who can bring the columns down quickest. Give or take a month, it was then 1900 years since Vesuvius' destruction of the city. The two events are not without their parallels. Archaeologists who know Pompeii well have a great deal to say on the subject. For even since 1980, when an earthquake caused much damage to the famous site, Pompeii has been the scene of a permanent catastrophe. Year by year, day by day, the city is being destroyed ‑ and largely because of man.

It must be used to it by now. Seventeen years before the disaster that buried it, the city was devastated by an earthquake. At the time of the eruption several buildings had just been rebuilt, while others were still being restored. The wool market, for example, had lost part of its rubble facade; this section had been replaced with brick, but the facing had yet to be applied to disguise the discordant mixture of materials ‑ when suddenly, 24 August AD 79 dawned.


 * The city’s second existence began with its gradual rediscovery in the 18th century**

But just when Pompeii was being ‘revived’, according to the accepted phrase, it began to die its second death. Not only because the early excavations, carried out over two hundred years ago and again in the 19th century, often turned out to be more of a massacre ‑ what fun to carry off statues and fling around inscribed bronze plaques! ‑ but also because all the remains preserved by the catastrophic eruption, were now exposed to the extremes of the weather, to vegetation, and to man.

Even before the most recent earthquake, the situation was not ideal. But Pompeii nevertheless retained its attractive appearance; photographers could still enjoy working there. The shocks of 23 November 1980 sent columns, whole walls or sections of wall and certain upper storeys crashing to the ground, and left several others leaning dangerously. Entire areas of the city were closed to visitors; props and struts were introduced. As elsewhere in Italy, the entrance fee was suddenly increased: from 150 to 4000 lire.


 * Save Pompeii: a cry across the world. But who listened to it?**

In 1983 the authorities in charge of the site asked the French archaeologist Jean-­Pierre Adam to prepare a technical report on the damage sustained by the city, to evaluate all possible methods of restoration and the various remedies that could be employed. In 1984 the European Community awarded the sum of 36 million lire for the restoration of Pompeii, the first payment to be made available from the beginning of 1985.

Was Pompeii about to be rescued? In 1985 a new superintendent was appointed. He promised to implement all the report's findings. Yet the result was a complete stoppage to all archaeological work on the site. Of course, archaeologists continued to travel from all over the world to see what was going on, in their own time and paying their own expenses. They returned dismayed. In spite of the efforts of their Italian colleagues, in spite of the huge increase in entrance tariffs and the considerable size of the available budget, in spite of the drastic reduction of the area open to the public, the situation was not improving; in fact, if anything, it was getting worse. The report has still not produced any results. No work has been commissioned, no contract has been signed with the excellent institutes of restoration that exist within Italy itself, in Florence and in Rome, and which are generally considered the best in the world. The 36 million lire are waiting, they say, for 'technical and administrative problems which have yet to be resolved'.


 * Pompeii suffers from pollution; the worst forms of damage are of human origin**

Some damage is caused quite innocently. The site receives about half a million visitors a year; it has become the great public park of the Naples region, filled with buildings, and it welcomes an average 4500 tourists on each opening day. Almost 22,000 visitors have been counted on certain Easter Mondays. These visitors, inevitably, walk around, and in walking they wear down the roads. In particular, they wear down any pavements left in antiquity without a stone covering. Below the surface of these pavements run lead drains, ancient drains reconstructed after the earthquake of 62, and placed at that time ‑ provisionally, so they thought ‑ not far from the surface. Little by little the tourists erode the soil, until these lead pipes are uncovered; they tread on them; the lead is crushed, cracks, and eventually often disappears altogether.

The stone‑covered pavements suffer too. Cracks open up in the mortar or in the mosaic of pebbles. Bit by bit, the covering, trampled and kicked, falls to pieces. Only the paving slabs of the streets themselves stand up to this harsh treatment, as these were always carved from solid lava and were designed to withstand the passage of the carts. The edges of the pavements, however, are often made of volcanic tufa or limestone, soft stones that are eroded by the constant wear and tear, worn down and deformed. This happened in Roman times, too, but then they would have been replaced. Visitors to Pompeii should surely be made to walk in the street, not on the pavements. In the famous Via dell'Abbondanza the constant passage of feet has worn the pavements down to the same level as the road, and in some places even below it.


 * To this gradual, and usually accidental, type of damage can he added less innocent forms**

Graffiti continue to multiply, the vandals preferring to leave their mark on the few paintings that are still in good condition. People pull gently at the edge of a layer of plaster that is starting to come away ‑and there are plenty of these. They get into the forbidden areas, by clambering over the barriers or by whatever other means they can find, and amuse themselves to the extent of committing acts of vandalism, pure and simple....

Another favourite pastime is to pick up remains, to carry off small pieces of stucco or pottery, or fragments of marble. Paintings are particularly popular. Not to be carried away in one piece to be offered for sale later ‑ that would be too difficult. Instead, the best part ‑ a decorative motif, a human figure, an animal, a small tableau ‑ is roughly hacked out. This kind of activity is not a recent development, of course; it represents the continuation of an age‑old practice. Traditions die hard in Campania, whether they are encouraged by tourists or faithfully maintained by the inhabitants of the region.

In reading books on Pompeii, people are often surprised by the small number of minor objects found there ‑ statuettes, for example ‑ even on the site of recent excavations. This rarity is even more striking because the houses excavated in Herculaneum by American archaeologists retained, by contrast, all their smaller objects. And yet the two cities were both victims of the same eruption. Many other countries have experienced what could be called 'bargain‑offer' excavations. But in Pompeii, this exceptional site, the disappearance of objects seems to have reached a worrying level. There is practically nothing left that could be carried away in a pocket or a bag. The authorities have even had to give up leaving copies of antique objects (casts and false bronzes), let alone any original furniture in place, which would have constituted an exceptional history lesson for visitors.


 * Sometimes the restoration work itself is destructive**

'Obviously,' says Jean‑Pierre Adam, 'the archaeologists and authorities do not know what is happening, and even if they did, there is precious little they could do about it. You must remember that we are not far from Naples. Furthermore, the managers of the site are virtually obliged to employ local firms to carry out restoration work on Pompeii. These firms, who may be quite well versed in current building techniques, are completely incompetent when it comes to matters of restoration.' Restoration work requires scrupulous care and extensive knowledge of specialized techniques. These conditions are not always met. And so, paradoxically, we see the restoration work hastening the deterioration it was intended to prevent.

Sometimes it is the fault of ancient work; they did not know any better. Perhaps they were not aware that lintels over window and door openings should be replaced with hard wood suitably seasoned to prevent rot and mould. Soft wood, insufficiently treated, quickly succumbs to attack; wood‑eating insects move in, with disastrous consequences. Some mistakes are notorious: in the House of Meleager, in the north‑west of the city, the roof timbers for a room 5 m x 11 m, designed to support the weight of over 5 tons of tiles, were erected with no triangular sections to give it strength; in spite of attempts to reinforce the roof with steel, the structure collapsed.


 * Blunders in the use of modern materials**

Sadly, the reinforced concrete used on the site was often, according to the report's findings, 'particularly badly mixed'. Was this the result of repeated mistakes or of small savings on the cost of the materials? The concrete flakes away; the steel skeleton, exposed to the air, begins to rust and to expand, hastening the destruction of the building. Similar faults can be found in many of the mortar coatings applied to protect areas of ancient masonry. The poor quality mortar, which contains too much sand, tends to crack as it ages; soon water and vegetation start to penetrate.

This same uncertain mixture of incompetence and roguery can be seen in the restoration of painted plaster wall surfaces. The workmen of ancient times used iron ties to attach the surface layers to the masonry behind them, but not only are these ugly, they also rust, expanding and cracking the plaster all round them. Yet more modern alternatives are scarcely any better.

To reattach the plaster to the masonry without having to remove it completely, they start by removing the crumbling edges from the surface that is to be consolidated. They then remove the old mortar using an iron rod poked up from below between the facing and its support. The gap is refilled with a liquid concrete poured down into the gap from above. Problems arise from the fact that the removal of the old mortar can never be complete. If it were, the whole surface would disintegrate, in spite of the supporting struts. So they leave some in place, which means that after the pouring process, there are two different types of mortar next to each other; being of a different composition, they react in different ways, causing cracks to form. This has resulted in the collapse of whole areas of wall surface.

The new mortar does not even fill the entire space. Investigations were carried out on a painted wall in the House of the Pygmies, restored in 1979; the height of the area being treated was 1.5 m, but the new liquid mortar ran down at best only 22 cm, and at worst, a mere 4 cm. The flows of plaster were not even contiguous. In addition, the load‑bearing masonry was not treated in any way, so after a short time they had to repeat the process all over again. Once more, they had to scratch away at the edges of the top layer of plaster, and so on, until the whole thing had disappeared.

Clearly, the work of the 1st‑century builders of Pompeii does not always help the 20th‑century restorers. Analyses carried out in Paris show that, even where the plaster surfaces were executed with great care, what lay behind them was not necessarily of the same quality. The lime content of the mortar was often rather low, and this antique mortar, originally designed to save money, crumbles easily. It can even be eroded by the wind. In damp areas, it encourages rising damp, which damages the painted murals. It is the difference in lime content between the wall and its covering that causes so many plaster surfaces to become detached. And finally, in the rubble of the wall itself, a variety of different materials was often used.


 * The fertility of the region is another enemy of the ruins;**

Farmers have always prized the land around Mount Vesuvius, because the soil there is some of the most fertile in the world. Several metres thick, the topsoil abounds in rapidly absorbed mineral salts, thanks to Vesuvius. In the time of Augustus, at the beginning of the 1st century AD, the geographer Strabo wrote that, in certain parts of Campania, you could get two wheat harvests, a third of millet, and sometimes even a fourth of vegetables. Even today, farmers in the region grow several crops of early vegetables, even planting them in the orchards. The same rich soil, only in a thinner layer, lies beneath Pompeii. The result is catastrophic.

Thirty‑one parasitic plant varieties have been identified on the site by G. Aymonin of the National Museum for Natural History. There is a whole collection of weeds, from acanthus to wild carrot, from the fiercesome fennel and dreadful fig, to bindweed and brambles. First, the plants invade patches of bare earth. In the areas visited by tourists, the battle against the weeds is relatively easy, as the visitors' feet now become our allies. But in the houses that are dosed to the public, enclosed areas of bare soil ‑ in the peristyles, gardens, atria ‑ are rapidly covered with a dense mat of vegetation, which soon reaches out towards the surrounding walls and attacks them. This is a particular problem in the most badly ruined houses close to the sectors that have not yet been excavated.

Vegetation also attacks concrete floors and their decoration. It can utterly destroy mosaic floors. As soon as a single one of the tiny cubes goes missing, a plant will come and take root there. It is even possible for the roots of plants outside to force off the revetments. Most visitors are blissfully unaware of all this. They see no more than five or six houses, all of which are well kept, and remain quite oblivious of what is quietly being destroyed elsewhere. For the travelling exhibition on Pompeii that toured Europe recently, a plan was drawn up showing the areas of flooring in the excavated portion of the city that still have their original stone or marble coverings. They now constitute only a very small percentage of the total surface area. Yet when they were first excavated, they were all covered, every single one ‑with mortar in the case of the more humble dwellings, and with mosaics in the case of the richest. Thousands of square metres of floor covering must have disintegrated and simply ceased to exist. And the destruction continues.

Stonework may also be destroyed, when the covering has disappeared and the facing has been damaged or fallen away. On the tops of walls, brambles, fennel and broom take hold, soon forming a great mass of vegetation that results in falling masonry. Along the inside walls, valerian and brambles cling to the surfaces and dig their roots into the stonework, working their way under the facings. The roots grow, thicken, burying themselves ever more deeply. Cracks open up, also allowing damp to enter. Ivy, too, plays its part; it clings to the facings and weighs on them, encouraging them to come away. It is attached to the facing more tightly than the facing is attached to the wall, so when people try to remove the ivy, the whole surface of the wall comes away with it.


 * An archaeological disaster of the first order**

Of course, all it would take is a small army of careful and dedicated cleaners to take up arms against these plagues. Plus a team of expert restorers.... Today, in the parts of Pompeii that are still closed to the public, you will find walls buried under a mass of vegetation, fissured masonry and cracked columns, crumbling mosaics in which one piece after another is failing away; invading plants, combined with damp, human damage and neglect, are threatening the site as much as the instability of the ground upon which it stands. There are houses which have been excavated, but which you can no longer enter because of the weeds growing there. Close to the unexcavated areas, some courtyards of the ancient houses have been transformed into jungles, which, left to their own devices, attack, crack and destroy at will.

It is a slow, gradual tragedy that will leave not a wrack behind. Pompeii has become the sorry example of how not to proceed in matters of restoration. It is a major archaeological disaster.

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