Artifacts Excavated from Pompeii Dig Site
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- Category: Earth, Air, Space Science
- Published on Wednesday, 06 March 2024 17:40
- Written by Contributing Editor
Artifacts from the ancient city of Pompeii, Italy, destroyed by a volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, have recently been excavated from a frequent dig site referred to as the House of Leda.
The restoration, excavation, and enhancement of the House of Leda in Regio V, currently underway, aims to complete the excavation of the rooms, already partially investigated, of the so-called House of Leda, and aims at a broader project of liberation of the entire domus overlooking Via del Vesuvio and limited of the adjacent rooms not yet excavated, down to their floor levels.
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"After the eruption, people from nearby towns tried in vain to find the buried city. Because Pompeii was a major port, people naturally searched for it near the sea. But the eruption had filled in the harbor and pushed the coastline out, meaning Pompeii now lay inland — and its location would remain a mystery for more than 1,500 years. In 1599, Pompeii was accidentally rediscovered during construction of a canal. Serious excavations began in 1748 and are still ongoing, making Pompeii the longest continually excavated site in the world," said Rick Steves, author of the website Rick Steves Europe.
Leda's House: other rooms and two new domus emerge from the safety and restoration works.
The House of Leda (V, 6, 12) is currently the subject of excavation and restoration activities aimed at solving the problems of conservation of the decorative apparatus and setting up a new system of protective roofs and the enhancement and opening of the domus to the public.
The ongoing construction site is completing the excavation of the rooms already known since 2018, including the one with the fresco of Leda and the swan, and still partially buried with the retreat of the boundary escarpment between the excavated and unexcavated city, bringing to light additional rooms, partly connected to two new domus, located respectively to the north and south.
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Current investigations are providing useful elements for the planimetric definition of these two new domus, accompanied by a series of discoveries of frescoes of particular value.
The area occupied by the House of Leda has already been partly investigated by underground excavations, dating back to between the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, thanks to an eruptive layer of 1822 that covers the modern fill levels on the southern side. The tunnels have removed the stratigraphy of 79 A.D. up to a height of 50-80 cm from the floor levels, while in the other houses the pumice deposit reaches a height of almost 4 m, covering the wall ridges.
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Leda's House has two cubicles on either side of the entrance, one of which houses the painting depicting Leda and the swan. The new rooms that emerged include the tablinium, a corridor for the entrance to the servile quarters and a small quadrangular room. They are all connected to the atrium, of which the northern part has also been brought to light, and show extensive traces of intervention on the floor plans, indicating that the body of the building has undergone several building phases.
The pictorial decorations can all be traced back to the IV Style. In the atrium we have red and yellow panels punctuated by fake architecture, with mythological paintings in the center (one with Narcissus emerged as early as 2018) while in the tablinium and cubicles the white background is preferred with naturalistic elements such as birds, glimpses with trees and seascapes; Fantastic animals are sometimes depicted on the side fields. The cubicle to the north of the fauces shows roundels with portraits of female faces. Finally, the walls of the corridor are decorated in such a way as to replicate different types of marble.
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The northern domus is currently composed of six rooms, almost all connected to the atrium, located to the north. A group of terracotta figurines was found in the area between the southern wing and the atrium (E-Journal of the Pompeii Excavations 9). The same wing preserves most of the decorations in the IV Style, of which the middle and upper registers are visible. The pinakes depict still lifes and paintings with lake subjects. The surrounding rooms, on the other hand, are characterized by higher floor levels than Leda's House.
The southern domus includes the fauces, one of the side cubicles and part of the atrium, but excavation operations are still ongoing in this sector. The atrium was equipped with a staircase of which the negative layout remains. Near the staircase there is a lararium with a marble shelf. Among the decorations in IV Style that cover the back walls, the mythological painting depicting Frisso and Elle fleeing on the ram of the Golden Fleece stands out.
The excavation operations currently underway therefore aim to restore the entire planimetric layout of Leda's house and to acquire sufficient data to define the main rooms of the two neighboring domus to the north and south. At the same time, the cleaning of the frescoed surfaces from volcanic residues and concretion deposits is being carried out, consolidation of the surface and depth layer and then starting the pictorial restoration phase.
