Knowledge, conservation and technologies: a research project on the streets of Ancient Pompeii

Abstract

The recent conclusion of a challenging project on surveying and monitoring the conservation status of the archaeological site of Pompeii was an opportunity to build a database of information about the city buried by the Vesuvius eruption in 79 A.D. The use of the most modern detection technologies (laser scanners, drones, etc.) has allowed to reach such degrees of accuracy as to open new perspectives of research on urban history.The survey, in fact, has returned in detail for the first time the compositional geometries and the weaving of the blocks of the ancient roadmap of the site. In this perspective it seems interesting to systematise the new data and those from the archaeological excavations, also recent, on one of the most fascinating themes of the history of Pompeii: the forma urbis of the city, the chronology of the roads and the great work of monumentalisation consisting in their realization in stone blocks.Therefore, on the basis of the study on the streets of Pompeii from a usage continuity perspective in the two phases of their life (the ancient, pre-eruption, and the modern, post-excavation), the research project that is illustrated aims to increase the levels of knowledge of the site, through the analysis of the techniques and the constituent materials, the definition of the relative chronology about the realization of the various stretches, the assessment of the conservation status. This also in order to identify appropriate management tools and appropriate strategies for the protection of such assets.The project, for its implementation, will use: study of the construction typologies, surveys aimed to acquire knowledge of the constituent materials, observation of the stratigraphic relations between the different road sections, pre-eruption and post-excavation historical analysis.The data that emerge will be integrated with excavation surveys, aimed at verifying chronologies and stratigraphic layers; they will be complemented by the results of the excavation of the alley between the Insulae 2 and 3 of the Regio V of Pompeii, to be executed, to return an undisturbed sample for study, both from the point of view of the geometries and of the techniques and the constituent materials.