Bay of Naples 79AD -- Plan of Vesuvius ash distibution from the 79 AD eruption showing the cities and towns which were affected. Photo by MapMaster, Wikimedia.
Posted on 04/08/2016 2:06:05 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
About 400 years ago, a throng of dusty workmen laid down their shovels and huddled around an ancient painted wall -- a fresco, technically -- unearthed in a tunnel near Italy's Bay of Naples. The men were at work on a massive construction project, burrowing through a hill to build a canal for a local armament factory and mill. No one expected to find fine art. But as the workmen dug deeper into the hill, they encountered wonder upon wonder -- house walls painted blood red and sunflower yellow, fragments of carved inscriptions, pieces of Roman statues.
The architect supervising the project took little interest in the curious finds. But in the decades that followed, scholars deduced -- correctly -- that the costly canal had cut through a part of Pompeii, a Roman seaside town last glimpsed on a black day in August, 79 CE, when nearby Mount Vesuvius shook off centuries of sleep, hurling molten rock and other volcanic debris across the countryside. The scholars' deduction launched an age of exploration. Art collectors, engineers, and eventually archaeologists combed the 80-kilometer-long bay and the neighboring island of Capri, uncovering the ruins of ancient seaside resorts and more than 130 waterfront villas belonging to Rome's upper crust. The Bay of Naples, it transpired, was the Malibu of the ancient world.
Wealthy Romans, says classical archaeologist Elaine Gazda of the University of Michigan, were likely the first in history to snap up waterfront properties and build spectacular, sumptuous summer homes overlooking the sea. The coastal real estate boom that followed was unprecedented in antiquity. "We don't really have ruins resembling these in the Hellenistic world," says Gazda, who has studied villas along the Bay of Naples. "It's a completely new phenomenon."
(Excerpt) Read more at hakaimagazine.com ...
Bay of Naples 79AD -- Plan of Vesuvius ash distibution from the 79 AD eruption showing the cities and towns which were affected. Photo by MapMaster, Wikimedia.
“We’re taking this beach to Cuba!”
Filthy communist hijackers.
I was helping my neighbor dig last summer and you know what we found?
Rocks.
These weren’t any of those new-fangled rocks.
These rocks had to be fifty, sixty years old.
One rock looked like somebody had chipped it.
It was me.
Dang near hit my toe with that pick.
I sent it to the university.
They sent it back with a note asking if it fell out of my head.
Informative and enlightening.
Magnificent!
Cool.
Oh no, you’ve disturbed a cache of Native American throwing stones...
I was prepping back then. Had to store my ammo some where.
They were like Barbra Streisand and other celebrities of today who covet the beach property for their villas and palaces.
:') When ya got a lot more wealth than ya need, and have hundreds of new slaves to put to work, ya buy (or more likely, confiscate) some land out in the country and put 'em to work farming it and caring for the herds and flocks. Of course, that just makes ya wealthier, so when some general leads the legions down to pulverize, say, the non-Romans in the Bay of Naples, and ya hear about how nice it is, well...
Lolol - still laughing as I post.
;’)
The Flintstones is what inspired me to want to take up archaeology. Or maybe it was what inspired me to work at a rib joint, I dunno.
;')
Oplontis, a neighboring town which was also buried.
http://www.oplontisproject.org/
images:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Oplontis&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&tbm=isch
Why should you go to Stabiae?
http://www.herculaneum.ox.ac.uk/?q=stabiae
Graffiti from Pompeii
http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%20Pompeii.htm
“III.5.4 (exterior of a small house); 8903: Gaius Sabinus says a fond hello to Statius. Traveler, you eat bread in Pompeii but you go to Nuceria to drink. At Nuceria, the drinking is better.
“Nuceria Necropolis (on a tomb); 10231: Serena hates Isidorus
“Herculaneum (bar/inn joined to the maritime baths); 10674: [a bar tab] Some nuts ? coins; drinks: 14 coins; lard: 2 coins; bread: 3 coins; three meat cutlets: 12 coins; four sausages: 8 coins. Total: 51 coins
“Herculaneum (on a water distribution tower); 10488: Anyone who wants to defecate in this place is advised to move along. If you act contrary to this warning, you will have to pay a penalty. Children must pay [number missing] silver coins. Slaves will be beaten on their behinds.”
Thanks for the interest in this topic, all. I'm still looking for some reference to one of the houses, I think in Pompeii (may have been one of the other towns) that was built in a gap between two larger, older homes, and consisted of a grand front door and used some Trompe l'oeil approaches to distract visitors from the fact that the whole structure was basically a hallway. :')Almost three dozen bakeries are known from Pompeii (much of the city remains unexcavated) and in one of them the ovens preserved the bread that had been put in to bake. It's, uh, a little burned. Probably not worth taking a bite out of it.
Charred bread excavated from the ancient Roman city of Pompeii still shows the maker's mark
Pre-Roman Pompeii was built by the Samnites:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1779188/posts
About 4000 years ago, IOW 2000 years before the famous 79 AD eruption buried the towns around the Bay of Naples, including Pompeii, Vesuvius erupted and buried a bronze age, probably prehistoric town near modern Nola.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/584970/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1188762/posts
8000 years ago, Etna erupted, caused a landslide, which slid into the sea and caused a tsunami that eventually hit what would someday be the Holy Land:
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/atlityam/index
And, here it is, I had some details messed up or conflated with a different domus:
http://bellcurveoflife.blogspot.com/2009/05/herculaneum-house-of-grand-portal.html
House of the Golden Cupids peristylum -- In the early days the ground of the peristylum was used as a kitchen garden. In a second phase these areas became small gardens adding to the beauty of the building, but some of them had trees providing figs, lemons, apples and cherries to the family.
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