The nature of Sources - Archeological evidence

Sources aren't evidence - they don't prove anything

• the historian must prove it to lead to a certain conclusion
• objects don't speak for themselves

Make you feel 'in touch' with Pompeii

Types of sources include:

• Inscriptions
• remains of houses and building structures
• plant remains
• wall writings
• furniture remains
• painting
• mosaics
• wax tablets
• objects of everyday life

Wallace - Hadrill says that much evidence doesn't correlate to what they believe to be a typical roman house

Mauri suggest mix of residential and commercial units evidents that pompeii was in decline

• Hadrill disagrees

Formal Inscriptions: civic charters and regubtious, dedications by wealthy citizens - e.g. funery inscriptions

Formal inscriptions provide evidence for

• gates of construction
• prominant families
• structure of government + political players

There were two types of wall writings: Graffeti and Public Notices

Public Notices

• Professional - done by scriptors
• white washed with lime then electoral notices written at night (clear streets)
• PROGRAMMATA - electorial manifesto/slogans\
• Edicata munerum - programs announcing shows
• coming to ampitheatre

graffeti

• lots of variety
• shared thoughts (feelings, love, contempt, remembering dates, advertising services/fees, amateur poems, angry outbursts, ****
• An individual source of information
• Wallace Hadrill: Ancient graffiti can reveal vitality of everyday lives
  
• gives an informal voice to people usually heard

Wax Tablets + Papyri: Information about business + legal documents

Decorative Arts: Frescoes, paintings, mosaics, sculptures, furnishings and patterned floors

Frescoes: provide information of greek infleunce and development of Romant art and changes in society

Decorative Gardens and household furnishings

Preserved in good condition due to the thick layer of debris

Sarah Bisel- Biochemical analysis of bones + measurement

There are problems using Yoricle as evidence

• Hard to dignose signs + symptoms
• diseases not present on bones

Estelle Lazor: Studied skeletal remains of 300 individuals

Badly worn teeth: staple food info (pumice in bread ground teeth)

Studied found in pompeii was in good health and was very well nourished

Welhelmina Jashemski: carried out studies into soil contours, root cavaties, carbonised plant remains and pollen

• supplemented these with evidence from: Paintings
• Archeologists gained a clearer picture of product + garden

Rekationship between town and countryside

• discovery of vineyards and olive gardens

Pliny the younger - letters to Tacitus (records what was believed at the time)

positive:

• geographical clues used by volcanologists + first hand account of personal reactions

Negative

• Tacitus requested response 25 years later, reliability?
• purpose?
• omissions?

• Strabo
• Vitruvious of architecture (appearances of houses and activities inside rooms)
• Seneccaa
• Pliny the Elder

*supplement these with graffeti and cicero and livy of the events of the eruption

• Stratigraphy
• Stylistic Sequences
• Using paintings (related to August Mav's Style)
• Absolute and relative dating

• Using hypothesis + testing
• looking for evidence to support - however hard to do (due to insufficient evidence)
• Incomplete excavations