Exploring an ancient city

Few can think of a more exciting way to spend their summer, especially for a history professor. Dr. Ben Lowe of Western's history department has spent each summer (except one) since 2001 doing what many history buffs only dream of doing: investigating and surveying a well-preserved archaeological site. The site Lowe and his wife, fellow professor Christy Lowe, examine is the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, which is a ruined and partially buried ancient city near the present day city of Naples, Italy. Pompeii was completely buried by a volcanic eruption from neighboring Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. The city, having been completely covered in 60 feet of ash and pumice, was not rediscovered until 1748. Pompeii, which is listed by the World Heritage Organization as a World Heritage Site, is also one of the most popular tourist attractions in Italy, with over 2.5 million visitors in 2007. Lowe, who has been excavating different archaeological sites since 1991, started with the Pompeii Project in 2001. This project is the first to examine the production and consumption of food throughout the town. "To achieve this, we are identifying, analyzing and documenting all extant physical remains and material objects associated with the storage, distribution, processing, preparation, serving and consumption of food and drink," said Lowe. "The immediate goal of this research is to compile a database recording all the extant structures and remains associated with food and drink." Nearly no excavation of Pompeii is allowed, as tourists and pollution have made the site one of the 100 most endangered historical sites in the world; last fall the Italian government declared the site to be in a state of emergency. "Many of the houses we entered had paintings or other pieces of artwork on the walls that were being destroyed by (the) pollution," said Philip Myers, a Western history student who accompanied Lowe in the summer of 2007. "The people in charge of the site seem to randomly close down houses due to pollution and too much human traffic, but we were able to get in some houses and buildings that were closed to the public." "The best bit of our work is our access to parts of the site that are not open to the public," said Lowe. "Vast areas of the site are not open and haven't been open for perhaps 50 years. We have seen rooms and paintings that are not recorded (to my knowledge) on any previous report." "A lot of the work I was involved with was figuring out what the purpose was for each room in a house, some of which were really large," said Myers. "We learned that Pompeii was a pretty cosmopolitan place. In many sections of the city people were encouraged not to be isolated in homes like we are. They had hot food vendors on the corner, and few of the homes had their own cooking facilities. Very big social aspect and big city life---not discussed in history classes." In past years, students of Western and students from other universities have participated in the project. The project is not affiliated with any university, and students have been involved from the beginning, with Western students participating for the past five years. "Archaeology is a profession you will either love or hate," said Lowe. "If you don't like a lot of hard work out-of-doors, then it's not for you. It has enabled me to spend extended periods of time working in parts of the world of I would never have got to visit otherwise. I've dug in the Orkney Islands, England, Cyprus, Israel and Jordan. It would be extremely difficult to name a favorite as I have enjoyed them all a great deal. In 1992-1993, I worked on the excavation of a church at Tel Kerioth - the home town of Judas Iscariot. The joy of discovery is tremendous - at Tel Kerioth I got to excavate a tomb that hadn't been opened for 1,500 years."