Assess New Technologies Currently in Use in the Excavation of Pompeii and Herculaneum

Assess new technologies currently in use in the excavation of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Historically, excavation techniques employed at Pompeii and Herculaneum have involved invasive, destructive technologies that can have detrimental effects. In very early excavations during the reign of the Bourbons in Italy, treasure-hunting was the main motivation fuelling excavation, and excavators ignored the damage caused to the site by hurried, careless uncovering of the cities. As time has passed, however, awareness has grown as to the importance of the site and the need to preserve it for future generations. For this reason, new technologies generally designed to be less destructive and provide further information on life in Pompeii and Herculaneum that was previously unavailable have been developed, such as photo-imaging of papyri scrolls, plaster casts of plant remains, and x-raying human remains.

Upon its excavation, the Villa of the Papyri, located in Herculaneum, was found to contain approximately 1800 papyri scrolls which, carbonised by extreme heat and compressed by the weight of volcanic waste, were extremely fragile, difficult to unroll and hard to read. Early attempts to open these scrolls resulted in many being destroyed, until Father Antonio Piaggio developed a machine in 1756 which was designed to ease the unrolling process. This still, however, caused some damage to scrolls, and the scrolls remained diabolically difficult to read. Recently, archaeologists have utilised NASA-developed multi-spectral imaging, which isolates the band of light in the ancient inks to sharpen the image, to read the ancient Greek texts of Epicurean philosopher Philodemus contained in the papyri. This new technology has resulted in many previously illegible letters and words becoming clear, and the ease of reading has been improved in general. Further technology which would eliminate the need to unroll scrolls, such as medical imaging, would remove the possibility of damaging the papyri in the unrolling process and preserve these precious artefacts for future generations. The multi-spectral imaging currently utilised by archaeologists is an excellent advance, but further technological developments could improve this even more.

The technique of pumping plaster under pressure into ash holes left