A bronze statue at Pompeii’s Temple of Apollo, with Mount Vesuvius seen within the background (photograph 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, notably by way of the general public picture of the park. There may be now extra of a deal with speedy educational publication of latest findings launched in tandem with social media bulletins and press launch blasts posted on-line as a way 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 positioning as mendacity outdoors its famed partitions. Since 2023, he has pursued enlargement 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 one more medium that Zuchtriegel has relied on to proliferate his narrative for the archaeological park: the guide.
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 guide accommodates 53 colour photographs of the artifacts, day by 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 clarify 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 sometimes why is he — thinking about antiquity within the first place?
Home of the Faun in Pompeii, with a ground mosaic that could be a copy of a battle portray created both within the lifetime of Alexander or quickly after his dying, presumably by Philoxenus or Eretria (photograph 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 as we speak and people who died there within the eruption of 79 CE by way of accessible language. He brings readers into subjects of latest educational debates, resembling the scale of the 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 prospect to notice the anomaly of the etching by way of 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 guide are makes an attempt at weaving historical and fashionable connective threads over time and house, 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 Conflict 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 house in historical Pompeii. Moreover, the numerous American educational digs and excavators on the positioning, resembling these linked 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 solution to champion Italian cultural heritage, it’s an odd alternative for a guide written for and offered to American audiences.
For on a regular basis readers shopping for it off the shelf, Zuchtriegel’s guide 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. But it surely additionally opens up pivotal home windows into the positioning by way of illustrations and the afterword in regards to the “new dig” at Pompeii — one protecting 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 era 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 positioning. The guide is a part of a broader effort to extend public communications basically: a dedication to weaving a extra clear and relatable narrative into the story of an historical metropolis. In the long run, it is usually 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 out there on-line and thru unbiased booksellers.
