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HERCULANEUM - Another Victim of Vesuvius' Rage - 79AD

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Bianca
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« Reply #30 on: January 22, 2009, 12:36:58 pm »

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« Reply #31 on: January 22, 2009, 12:38:34 pm »

« Last Edit: January 22, 2009, 12:39:04 pm by Bianca » Report Spam   Logged

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« Reply #32 on: January 22, 2009, 12:40:38 pm »

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« Reply #33 on: January 22, 2009, 12:42:42 pm »





http://www.pompeiisites.org/Mediagallery.jsp?idGalleria=84&idFilmato=113
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« Reply #34 on: January 22, 2009, 12:45:54 pm »



Roman head being laser scanned.

(Credit:
Image courtesy of
University of Warwick)








                              Scientists Bring Painted Warrior 2,000 Years Old To Virtual Life






ScienceDaily
(Jan. 14, 2009)

— A 2000-year-old painted statue is being restored to her original glory by scientists from WMG at the University of Warwick, the University of Southampton, and the Herculaneum Conservation Project.

The Roman statue was discovered by the Herculaneum Conservation Project in the ancient ruins of Herculaneum, a town preserved in the same eruption that buried nearby Pompeii in AD 79.

It is thought to represent a wounded Amazon warrior, complete with painted hair and eyes preserved
by the ash that buried the town.

Archaeologists at the University of Southampton and the Herculaneum Conservation Project contacted WMG after hearing about the Group’s expertise in three key technologies: high resolution laser scanning, rapid prototyping and ultra-realistic computer graphics.

Researchers from WMG at the University of Warwick, Southampton and Herculaneum are now scanning, modelling and digitally recreating the Amazon statue.

Dr Mark Williams, a leader in laser measurement at WMG, took his team and equipment to the site. He said: “The statue is an incredible find. Although its age alone makes it valuable, it is unique because it has retained the original painted surface, preserved under the volcanic material that buried Herculaneum.”

Dr Williams used state-of-the-art equipment to accurately measure (within 0.05 of a millimetre) every surface of the bust and translated that information into a computer model. Dr Greg Gibbons, also of WMG, then used rapid prototyping to create a physical 3D model of the head revealing the smallest
detail.

Further recording was carried out on site by experts in archaeological computing from Southampton, led by Dr Graeme Earl. They used a novel form of photography which provided an extremely detailed record of the texture and colour of the painted surfaces.

Dr Earl said: “Cutting edge techniques are vital to the recording of cultural heritage material, since so much remains unstudied or too fragile to analyse. Our work at Southampton attempts to bridge the gap between computing and archaeology in bringing the best that colleagues in engineering have to offer to unique artefacts from our past.”

The Southampton team is now digitally re-modelling and re-painting the sculpture. They are using techniques derived from the film industry to recreate the original carved and painted surfaces.

In the final step Professor Alan Chalmers, head of WMG’s visualisation team and an expert in ultra-realistic graphics, will apply techniques to the computer model to exactly reproduce the lighting and environmental conditions under which the painted statue would have originally been created and displayed. This visualisation will provide archaeologists with an otherwise impossible view of how the original statue may have looked in context, and allow them to experiment with alternative hypotheses.

Professor Chalmers said: “Our work will be used both for educational and research purposes to give people new insights into the statue’s design, to provide a record for conservators, and to explore how
it may have been appreciated over 2000 years ago.”


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adapted from materials provided by University of Warwick.
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 MLA University of Warwick (2009, January 14). Scientists Bring Painted Warrior 2,000 Years Old To Virtual Life. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 21, 2009, from



http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2009/01/090112093513.htm
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« Reply #35 on: January 22, 2009, 12:58:19 pm »




               

                                    BUST OF XENO

                                    VILLA DEI PAPIRI
« Last Edit: January 22, 2009, 12:58:48 pm by Bianca » Report Spam   Logged

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« Reply #36 on: January 22, 2009, 01:02:04 pm »



FOUND IN THE VILLA DEI PAPIRI
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« Reply #37 on: January 22, 2009, 01:10:58 pm »




               

               FOUND IN THE VILLA DEI PAPIRI

               PROBABLY THE PHILOSOPHER SENECA
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« Reply #38 on: January 22, 2009, 01:12:57 pm »



PROBABLY DYONISUS

VILLA DEI PAPIRI
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« Reply #39 on: January 22, 2009, 01:16:37 pm »



Plan of Villa drawn by Weber showing the ancient structures and the tunnels that were made in order to recover the works of art.









                                                          VILLA DEI PAPIRI





The Villa of the Papyri is a private house in the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum (current commune of Ercolano, southern Italy).

Situated north-west of the township, the residence sits halfway up the slope of the volcano Vesuvius without other buildings to obstruct the view.

The abode was owned by Julius Caesar's father-in-law, Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus.

In AD 79, the eruption of Vesuvius covered all of Herculaneum with some 30 m of volcanic ash. Its remains were first excavated in the years between 1750 and 1765 by Karl Weber by means of underground tunnels. Its name derives from the discovery of a library in the house containing 1,785 carbonized papyrus scrolls.

 

 


 Ground plan and works of art



The villa's front stretched for more than 250 meters parallel to the coastline. It was also surrounded by a garden closed off by porticoes, but with an ample stretch of vegetable gardens, vineyards and woods down to a little harbor. Sited a few hundred metres from the nearest house in Herculaneum, Piso's home had four levels disposed in a series of terraces on the sloping site and was one of the most luxurious houses in all of Herculaneum and Pompeii. The Villa of the Papyri also housed a large collection of eighty sculptures of magnificent quality, many of them now conserved in the rooms of the large bronzes at the Naples National Archaeological Museum.

The villa remains faithful in its general layout to the fundamental structural and architectural scheme of the suburban villa in the country around Pompeii. The atrium functioned as an entrance hall and a means of communication with the various parts of the house. The entrance opened with a columned portico on the sea side. Around the bowl of the atrium impluvium were eleven fountain statues depicting Satyrs pouring water from a pitcher and Amorini pouring water from the mouth of a dolphin. Other statues and busts were found in the corners around the atrium walls.

The first peristyle had ten columns on each side and a swimming bath in the center. In this enclosure were found the bronze herma of Doryphorus, a replica of Polykleitos' athlete, and the herma of an Amazon made by Apollonios son of Archias of Athens. The large second peristyle could be reached by passing through a large tablinum in which, under a propylaeum, was the archaic statue of Athena Promachos. A collection of bronze busts were in the interior of the tablinum. These included the head of Scipio Africanus.

The real living and reception quarters are grouped around the porticoes and terraces so that the sun's light and view of the countryside and sea can be more directly enjoyed by the home's occupants and guests. In the living quarters, bath installations were brought to light and the library of rolled and carbonized papyri placed inside wooden capsae, some of them on ordinary wooden shelves and around the walls and some on the two sides of a set of shelves in the middle of the room.

The lands included a large area of covered and uncovered gardens for walks in the shade or in the warmth of the sun. The gardens included a gallery of works of art consisting of statues, busts, hermae and small marble and bronze statues. These were laid out between columns amidst the open part of the garden and on the edges of the large swimming bath
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« Reply #40 on: January 22, 2009, 01:26:15 pm »












Epicureanism and the library



Calpurnius Piso established a library of a mainly philosophical character. It is believed that the library was collected and selected by Piso's family friend and client, the Epicurean Philodemus of Gàdara.

Followers of Epicurus studied the teachings of this moral and natural philosopher.

This philosophy taught that man is mortal, that the cosmos is the result of accident, that there is no providential god, and that the criterion of a good life is pleasure. Philodemus' connections with Piso brought him an opportunity of influencing the young students of Greek literature and philosophy who gathered around him at Herculaneum and Naples.

Much of his work was discovered in about a thousand payrus rolls in the philosophical library recovered at Herculaneum.

Although his prose work is detailed in the strung-out, non-periodic style typical of Hellenistic Greek prose before the revival of the Attic style after Cicero, Philodemus surpassed the average literary standard to which most epicureans aspired. Philodemus succeeded in influencing the most learned and distinguished Romans of his age.

None of his prose work was known until the rolls of papyri were discovered among the ruins of the Villa of the Papyri.




Papyrus recovered from Villa of the Papyri.


At the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, the valuable library was packed in cases ready to be moved to safety when it was overtaken by pyroclastic flow; the eruption eventually deposited some 20-25 m of volcanic ash over the site, charring the scrolls but preserving them— the only surviving library of Antiquity— as the ash hardened to form tuff.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2009, 01:27:42 pm by Bianca » Report Spam   Logged

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« Reply #41 on: January 22, 2009, 01:32:08 pm »










Excavation



There is still 2,800 m² left to be excavated of this villa suburbana, the most luxurious in the resort
of Herculaneum.

Beneath the excavated area, new excavations in the 1990s revealed two previously undiscovered floors to the villa, which was built in a series of terraces overlooking the sea.

The reason that the remainder of the site has not been excavated is that the Italian government is practicing a policy of conservation and not excavation, and is more interested in protecting what has already been uncovered.

David Woodley Packard, who has funded conservation work at Herculaneum through his Packard Humanities Institute, has said that he is likely to be able to fund excavation of the Villa of the Papyri when the authorities agree to it; but no work will be permitted on the site until the completion of a feasibility report, which has been in preparation for some years. The first part of the report has emerged in 2008 but includes no timetable or cost since the decision for further excavation is a political one.

Using multi-spectral imaging, a new technique that was developed in the early 1990s, it is possible to read the burned papyri. With multi-spectral imaging, many pictures of the illegible papyri are taken using different filters in the infrared or in the ultraviolet range, finely tuned to capture certain wavelengths of light. Thus, the optimum spectral portion can be found for distinguishing ink from paper on the blackened papyrus surface. Non-destructive CT scans will, it is hoped, provide breakthroughs in reading the fragile unopened scrolls without destroying them in the process.



RETRIEVED FROM

wikipedia.org
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« Reply #42 on: January 22, 2009, 01:34:06 pm »



QuickTime VR panoramas of Villa dei Papiri and other new excavations in its vicinity, made in 2004.

Click on the node-markers to open a panorama in a new window.

Most of the panoramas contain hotspots linking adjacent nodes - indicated by the special cursor  - so it is also possible to explore the site using these, instead of the node-markers, or a mix of both.

The inset image is a work from the villa now in the National Archaeological Museum, Naples; click for a larger version.



http://www.proxima-veritati.auckland.ac.nz/Herculaneum/Papiri/index.html
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« Reply #43 on: January 22, 2009, 01:40:47 pm »








Virtual tour of Herculaneum, documenting the site as it was during the northern summer of 2001. Click on the node-markers to view a QuickTime VR panorama (in a new window).

Most of the panoramas contain hotspots linking adjacent nodes - indicated by the special cursor  - so it is also possible to explore the site using these, instead of the node-markers, or a mix of both.

Selected panoramas can be viewed at higher resolution in the fullscreen gallery. A selection of stills (zoomable) can be found in the still images gallery.




http://www.proxima-veritati.auckland.ac.nz/Herculaneum/index.html
« Last Edit: January 22, 2009, 01:43:00 pm by Bianca » Report Spam   Logged

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« Reply #44 on: March 18, 2009, 06:30:31 am »










                                               New treasure joins Herculaneum show



                                       Major exhibition explores life in ancient Roman town






 (ANSA)
- Naples,
March 17, 2009

- A new treasure from Herculaneum was unveiled in Naples on Tuesday, where it will join a major exhibition exploring life in the Ancient Roman town buried by Vesuvius in 79 AD. The show, running until April 13, already features over 150 artefacts and human remains uncovered over the last three centuries but the new relief, uncovered by accident last month, is stirring fresh interest. The marble sculpture, dating back to the 1st century AD, apparently depicts two separate scenes centred on Dionysius, the Greek counterpart of Ancient Rome's god of wine and merrymaking, Bacchus.

''The relief is particularly fascinating for scholars as we are not yet certain exactly the tale that is being reproduced on the work,'' explained Herculaneum's excavation chief Maria Paola Guidobaldi.

''It almost certainly shows Dionysius and what appears to be one of his female followers, a Maenad, dancing. However, there are also two other figures, one with men's hair and the other wearing female clothes that aren't yet clear.

''Nor are we certain what gift is being offered to Dionysius. It was very probably some kind of offering, perhaps a thanksgiving, much as people make today to patron saints''. The Greek marble relief was uncovered by accident in Herculaneum on February 18, during regular maintenance work.

It was located in a luxurious residential building on the northwest block of the town, which has only been partly excavated so far. The relief was fixed in the eastern wall of a large room, at about two metres above the ground. It appears to have been designed as a partner for another relief, located at the same level on the southern wall of the room, which was removed in 1997. ''The find is particularly important owing to the interpretation of the scene it shows, which is still an open question,'' said Pompeii Superintendent Pietro Giovanni Guzzo. ''So far no one has been able to find a connection between the two separate scenes dividing the relief, the dancer and the homage to Dionysius''.

The show is already hosting dozens of statues, skeletons, artefacts and textiles from the small seaside town south of Naples, which was destroyed in the same eruption that buried Pompeii on August 24, 79 AD.

While Pompeii was covered by hot ash and lava, its less famous neighbour disappeared under an avalanche of molten rock. This mingled with mud and earth and solidified, allowing fragile organic matter like wood, fabrics, wax tablets and papyrus rolls to survive.

Archaeologists began digging at the site at the start of the 1700s and continue to make discoveries today.

The exhibition is divided into three sections, focusing first on the magnificent statues of gods, heroes and emperors found among the ruins. The second section is dedicated to noble Herculaneum families such as that of the proconsul Marcus Nonius Balbus, one of the town's main benefactors, and also showcases many statues found at Herculaneum's largest residence, the Villa of the Papyri.

In the third section, the skeletons of fleeing townspeople are on show alongside everyday objects giving visitors an insight into the daily life of common people.

While bodies in Pompeii decomposed in the ash, Herculaneum's solidified mud preserved the skeletons intact, providing researchers with an extremely rare opportunity to examine remains of Ancient Romans, who usually cremated their dead.

The exhibition also includes an additional section at the end devoted entirely to Herculaneum's fabrics, which, like the townspeople, have been preserved in astonishing condition thanks to the sudden avalanche of molten rock at extremely high temperatures. Herculaneum: Three Centuries of Discoveries runs at the Naples Archaeological Museum until April 13.



photo: the Villa of the Papyri.
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