LEGO Pompeii

-
To round off my last post I gave a link to a pretty cool bit of research that was using X-Ray technology to read writing on carbonised scrolls from the Roman town of Herculaneum. Herculaneum, and the better known town of Pompeii, are extraordinary examples of archaeological site preservation - on August 24, AD 79 the eruption of nearby Mt Vesuvius, near the Bay of Naples in Italy, resulted in the burial of these towns, which lay largely preserved by a layer of ash and volcanic pumice for several centuries.

The specific date, by the way, is thanks to a written down eyewitness account of the eruption by Pliny the Younger.

Pompeii, one of the most frequently visited archaeological sites in the world, is the most extensive excavation of an urban site that has ever been undertaken (Alcock & Cherry 2009).

Pompeii, with Mt Vesuvius in the background.  Image sourced here.


There have been some absolutely remarkable archaeological finds at these sites - as well as the carbonised scrolls archaeologists have uncovered amazingly well preserved fresco wall paintings, evocative traces of the unfortunate humans and animals trapped by the falling ash, and carbonised food remains!


Part of a fresco from the Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii. Image sourced here.



A family frozen in time! The ash from the volcano had time to form around the bodies of those killed in the eruption and harden. Eventually the bodies decomposed but left body-shaped cavities that were filled with plaster of Paris at the time of excavation to produce these casts! Image sourced here.


My reason for this introduction to these sites?

A fantastic (and very fun-looking!) example of an exhibit currently on display at the Nicholson Museum in Sydney, Australia - LEGO Pompeii!!! A reconstruction of the ancient town from over 190,000 individual LEGO blocks!

Part of the LEGO Pompeii exhibit currently on display at the Nicholson Museum in Sydney, Australia. Image sourced here.


I mentioned in my first post that communication and engagement are important aspects of archaeology, and by extension, this applies to museums, which are often the 'public face' of archaeology! LEGO Pompeii is definitely one way of exciting and engaging wider audiences - particularly children, and in my opinion the Nicholson Museum should be applauded!

Here is an interesting article on the issue of how to engage and excite museum audiences and the use of “non-traditional” displays in the sector (with some more photos of the LEGO Pompeii exhibit!).

The LEGO Pompeii exhibition runs until the 31st of December 2015. I'm planning to visit Australia later in the year for the Australian Archaeological Association Conference in Fremantle. If I'm travelling via Sydney from New Zealand, I may just have to check it out!

Thanks for Reading,

Nick


Reference

Alcock, S. E. & Cherry, J. F. 2009. The Mediterranean World. In C. Scarre (ed.) The Human Past: World prehistory & the development of human societies (2nd edn). London: Thames & Hudson, pp. 472-517.
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Importance of Context in Archaeology

-
Image
In my last post I mentioned the importance of context to archaeological research. That is, knowing PRECISELY where an object was found and its relationship to other objects in the archaeological record.  The goal of archaeology is to understand past human behaviour and how that behaviour changes over time. The primary (and in some cases, the only!) source of evidence available to help achieve this goal is the archaeological record, or the material record of that behaviour. So, how do archaeologists get from ruins, pieces of dirty stone and pottery and patterns of dark patches in the soil to an understanding of human behaviour in the past and how this changes over time? This is where context is important!   To recap from the last post - Excavation, the principal method of data acquisition in archaeology, involves the systematic uncovering of archaeological remains through the removal of the deposits of soil and other material covering them and accompanying them. Two ...
Read more

Problems with Prehistory

-
Within archaeology, prehistory has a fairly straightforward meaning: prior to recorded (i.e. written down) history. In theory, the use of this term within the field to describe a time period in the past is free of value judgments. The key distinction between prehistoric and historical archaeology is one of differences in the resources that are available to archaeologists when trying to piece together peoples' behaviour in the past. In both cases, we are interested in the material remains of that behaviour. That is, in a nutshell, the definition of archaeology: the investigation of the human past by the study of the material remains left behind. British archaeologist Stuart Piggott once called archaeology 'the science of rubbish' because it predominantly involves the study of things that people have thrown away. Historical Archaeology In historical archaeology the study of material remains is complemented by the study of historical records - whether they be written histo...
Read more

Motupore Island continued

-
Image
The following is a slightly edited version of a report I originally wrote for PAST, the newsletter of the Prehistoric Society , which provided me with some funding to attend the Motupore Island excavation in Papua New Guinea in 2016. This did not end up appearing in PAST, so I thought I would post it here. In June 2016 the University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) ran an archaeological field school on Motupore Island, Papua New Guinea (PNG). Because my research as a graduate student at the University of Otago had looked at the archaeology of sites and regions thought to be linked to Motupore Island, I was invited to attend as an overseas student. A short report on the excavation follows.  Motupore Island in Bootless Bay is a small, waterless island located some 16km east of Port Moresby, the national capital of PNG. The island is about 800m long, 275m wide at its widest point, and rising to a maximum 61.4m above sea level. On the protected northern (shoreward) end of the island, a cu...
Read more