Archaeological geektastic excitement
Mar. 23rd, 2009 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sienamysticGot to go tonight to one of the AIA lectures here on campus. Dr. Steven Ellis, currently at the University of Cincinnati, came to present on his new excavations at Pompeii, where he's been digging since 2005. Apparently back in the 1870s, the diggers working on the site turned up some plain, less awesome buildings, said "Meh, let's go play with those temples instead," and let the site turn into an untouched jungle. Ellis, who has a focus on the less-elite sorts of neighborhoods (he seems to specialize in prostitution, taverns, and crime, which are always fun) decided to see what he could find in this particular city block.
The site is near one of the main gates, and seems to always have been occupied (even when Pompeii was Greek) by working-class folk and their industries. They excavated a tannery - a little four-vat operation - that was only the fourth one ever found in Roman Italy. Unfortunatly for his fame and fortune, the very next day somebody turned up tannery number five, and since it had 96 vats, they got all the press!
He also showed us where someone had built a garum tank (garum being a Roman fish paste that was very widely eaten - Dr. Ellis, who is Australian and posessed of a cheerfully vile sense of humor, compared it to Vegemite) and then showed how the building was altered when the market was flooded with cheap Spanish garum which made a small "homebrew" operation unprofitable. The owners filled up the garum vat, put a new floor down, and turned their building into a restaurant which apparently, based on the bones found in the drain, served nice young cuts of pork...and giraffe.
An absolutely fantastic way to spend an evening. I'm so glad I went.
The site is near one of the main gates, and seems to always have been occupied (even when Pompeii was Greek) by working-class folk and their industries. They excavated a tannery - a little four-vat operation - that was only the fourth one ever found in Roman Italy. Unfortunatly for his fame and fortune, the very next day somebody turned up tannery number five, and since it had 96 vats, they got all the press!
He also showed us where someone had built a garum tank (garum being a Roman fish paste that was very widely eaten - Dr. Ellis, who is Australian and posessed of a cheerfully vile sense of humor, compared it to Vegemite) and then showed how the building was altered when the market was flooded with cheap Spanish garum which made a small "homebrew" operation unprofitable. The owners filled up the garum vat, put a new floor down, and turned their building into a restaurant which apparently, based on the bones found in the drain, served nice young cuts of pork...and giraffe.
An absolutely fantastic way to spend an evening. I'm so glad I went.
