The last days of Pompeii

The Italian government has declared a "state of emergency" over the ancient city of Pompeii. The archaeological site has been deteriorating at an alarming rate, with litter, looting and stray animals overwhelming the city that was buried in ash in AD 79 when the volcanic Mt. Vesuvius erupted.

I have never been to Pompeii, but the story is, alas, a familiar one to those of us who study antiquity and the Middle Ages. Archaeological sites throughout the world are endangered, and not only is there the problem of a site becoming an unrecognizable pile of rubble to the general public, but scholars also become stymied as they try to glean more information on earlier excavated sites.

I'll give just a brief example from the collections of Ohio State's Center for Epigraphical and Palaeographical Studies. OSU has many "squeezes", which are created when wet paper is pressed on an inscribed stone and allowed to dry to created a "reverse 3D image" of the inscription. Many of these squeezes were made in the 1950s and 1960s. If a stone has remained outside since the time the squeeze was made, the stone today may be much harder to read than the squeeze because weather, pollution and tourists have rubbed away at the stone.

From the news reports, it appears Pompeii has also suffered serious damage over the past decades and hence the establishment of the state of emergency.