A bronze statue at Pompeii’s Temple of Apollo, with Mount Vesuvius seen within the background (picture by Graham O’Keeffe by way of Flickr)
In February of 2021, German-born archaeologist Gabriel Zuchtriegel was named because the Pompeii Archaeological Park’s new director. His tenure has seen notable shifts, significantly when it comes to the general public picture of the park. There may be now extra of a give attention to fast educational publication of latest findings launched in tandem with social media bulletins and press launch blasts posted on-line in an effort to amplify thrilling discoveries, for one, along with the standard use of multi-part documentaries airing on the BBC and PBS to develop public engagement. Final yr, Zuchtriegel acknowledged that he sees the way forward for the location as mendacity outdoors its famed partitions. Since 2023, he has pursued growth into excavation and vacationer tickets that encourage extra engagement with the close by websites of Boscoreale, Longola, Torre Annunziata, Civita Giuliana, and Castellammare di Stabia. However there may be yet another medium that Zuchtriegel has relied on to proliferate his narrative for the archaeological park: the e-book.
Earlier this month, the College of Chicago Press printed the English model of Zuchtriegel’s The Buried Metropolis: Unearthing the Actual Pompeii. Translated from the unique German by Jamie Bulloch, the e-book comprises 53 shade photographs of the artifacts, each day life, and interesting new excavations being undertaken within the metropolis. Zuchtriegel incorporates anecdotes from his personal life and the reimagined lives of a number of the 1,300 victims discovered at Pompeii since excavations started in 1748 to “speak vividly to [the reader’s] soul” in regards to the website’s enduring attract. However he additionally needs to elucidate what motivates skilled archaeologists like himself to dedicate their time, their our bodies, and their whole lives to the sector. He asks: Why are we — and infrequently why is he — thinking about antiquity within the first place?
Home of the Faun in Pompeii, with a flooring mosaic that could be a copy of a battle portray created both within the lifetime of Alexander or quickly after his demise, presumably by Philoxenus or Eretria (picture by Carole Raddato by way of Flickr)
Refreshingly, Zuchtriegel focuses on the on a regular basis lives of each the archaeologists and employees working on the website in the present day and people who died there within the eruption of 79 CE by means of accessible language. He brings readers into matters of latest educational debates, equivalent to the dimensions of town’s inhabitants, and interprets inscriptions and unearthed tablets. Zuchtriegel additionally jumps from materials tradition to faith, bringing in a famed graffito noting “Sodom(a) Gomora” and takes the possibility to notice the paradox of the etching when it comes to whether or not it refers back to the Sodom and Gomorrah story within the Hebrew Bible. He notes that we have now proof for Jewish folks within the metropolis however no clear proof for Christians at Pompeii.
Although first-person narratives interlaced all through the e-book are makes an attempt at weaving historic and fashionable connective threads over time and area, not each analogy is profitable. The cramped quarters of the room the place enslaved folks lived in Civita Giuliana are clumsily in contrast with the confined lodgings of refugees from East Prussia after World Battle II. He notes these refugees have been billeted in his “mother’s parents’ home in Regensburg,” however that is fairly totally different from enslaved individuals residing in a confined area in historic Pompeii. Moreover, the numerous American educational digs and excavators on the location, equivalent to these related to the College of Cincinnati, Cornell College, and the College of Massachusetts at Amherst, are largely elided and erased from the narrative altogether, with focus positioned predominantly on Italian excavation. Whereas that is comprehensible as a option to champion Italian cultural heritage, it’s an odd alternative for a e-book written for and offered to American audiences.
For on a regular basis readers shopping for it off the shelf, Zuchtriegel’s e-book is a singular, unprecedented probability to realize perception right into a profitable archaeological tourism enterprise that brings in about €20 million (~$22.5 million) per yr. However it additionally opens up pivotal home windows into the location by means of illustrations and the afterword in regards to the “new dig” at Pompeii — one masking round 9,000 sq. meters — that transcend the social media and documentaries. Maybe most significantly, The Buried Metropolis brings a extra humane and soulful model of Pompeii to life for the following technology of readers. This Pompeii focuses on the lives of on a regular basis Romans and restores the traditional animus (“spirit”) to the partitions, the discussion board, and the theater of the location. The e-book is a part of a broader effort to extend public communications on the whole: a dedication to weaving a extra clear and relatable narrative into the story of an historic metropolis. In the long run, it’s also a method for a brand new director so as to add a few of his personal memoir to that historic tapestry.
The Buried Metropolis: Unearthing the Actual Pompeii (2025) by Gabriel Zuchtriegel is printed by the College of Chicago Press and is on the market on-line and thru unbiased booksellers.
