Resurrecting Pompeii (7 page)
Read Resurrecting Pompeii Online
Authors: Estelle Lazer
These reconstructions invite comment. Sexual attributions based on subadult skeletons tend to be unreliable (Chapter 6). The validity of the determination of social status from skeletal evidence can also be questioned. Forensic scientists occasionally attempt to use bones as a guide to a person’s social position, but such studies are based on assumptions that cannot necessarily be extrapolated onto ancient societies. An example of this can be seen in the assumption that people of higher status tend to take better care of their teeth and are more able to afford dental restoration should the need arise. This may be the norm for modern Western society, but one cannot be certain that this was always the case, as suggested by Suetonius’ description of the Emperor Augustus’ teeth as ‘small, few and decayed’.
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Further, it is often assumed that people from higher classes are healthier and have better hygiene than people of lower social status. However, the preserved body of a Han Dynasty (mid-second century
BC
) Chinese lady of known high rank showed evidence of tuberculosis and parasites, such as schistosomes, whipworms and pin worms. It is also unreasonable to interpret status on the basis of nutrition. Wealthier individuals do not always have a better diet than the rest of the population. In England, for example, from the period of the Industrial Revolution to World War II, upper-middle-class people were comparatively malnourished as a result of eating white bread and jam. This diet was, in itself, a status symbol of people who could afford food that was more processed.
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It is rather simplistic to infer social status from associated finds, like jewellery.
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Expensive jewels do not always reflect high status; for example, some people in poor communities in parts of the Indian subcontinent adorn their children and women with gold jewellery. In addition, it is possible that looting occurred whilst people were attempting to escape the eruption of Mt Vesuvius, a point Bisel acknowledged.
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It is plausible that at least some of the jewellery found in association with bodies in the Campanian sites was stolen.
The provision of names to ancient individuals is not unique to Herculaneum. It tends to be misleading, as can be seen in the case of the ascription of the name ‘Lucy’ to an australopithecine skeleton, which was discovered in 1974. This name makes it difficult to consider the skeleton as anything other than female, though the sex attribution has been questioned.
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The names and attributes that Bisel gave the skeletons she examined were not mere inventions for the
National Geographic
. She used these whenever she spoke about specific Herculanean individuals. She saw these characterizations merely as a tool to make them more accessible to the general public. She was well aware that some of her interpretations stretched the evidence beyond the boundaries of the discipline but considered that most people would understand that she was only suggesting a possible reconstruction.
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This approach is not at all unlike that of Bulwer-Lytton, albeit with the added benefitof modern forensic knowledge.
Deiss devoted an entire chapter to the work of Bisel in the second edition of his book on Herculaneum. It was based on the
National Geographic
articles and direct communication with Bisel. A portion of this chapter is devoted to an examination of the population of the town from the skeletal evidence. The rest is concerned with the description of the same individuals that were ‘refleshed’ for
The Secrets of Vesuvius
and the
National Geographic
articles. In discussing the reconstructions Deiss stated that the skeletons ‘seemed … to develop personalities of their own’.
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This is somewhat ironic in the light of the fact that Deiss dedicated this account of the victims to the memory of Amedeo Maiuri, who decried
The Last Days of Pompeii
for creating an imitation of the site with numerous falsifications for the sake of romance and for lacking ‘a true and direct penetration into the city and its inhabitants’.
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It could be argued that simpli fication and romanticism is acceptable practice for popular works but the same influences can also be observed in Bisel’s more scholarly work. In one article, Bisel included the
National Geographic
artist’s reconstruction of ‘the Soldier’ with a skeletal biography in her own words. The caption states that this individual was a soldier. She did not mention that the only evidence for this attribution was the fact that the body was found with a sword. She suggested that the ante mortem loss of three teeth might have been due to a fight and that a slight enlargement of the adductor tubercule on the femur could have been due to activities like horseback riding, tree climbing or grasping lumber between his knees for carpentry work (carpenters’ tools were found with the body).
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The accompanying illustration from the
National Geographic
depicted the reconstructed individual with a horse, which reinforced the notion that the skeletal changes provided sufficient evidence to suggest that this person routinely rode. The suggestion that the three missing teeth could be explained by a fight is another example of recreating a personality based on circumstantial evidence; a soldier presumably would be more likely to be involved in that kind of activity. Bisel also employed the same, fairly specific, ages-at-death as in the
National Geographic
article.
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This can be observed in all the articles where Bisel reconstructed individuals from skeletal evidence.
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She was more circumspect in her other articles but the tendency to reanimate individuals persisted; for example, in one article she stated: ‘It is always more exciting to look at the individual people of an ancient site … every person has an interesting story to tell.’
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The inclination to interpret socio-economic status also continued in her scientific papers. Bisel assumed that all socio-economic strata could be found in the Herculaneum sample. She stated that it was obvious that the higher classes would have been better nourished and generally healthier. She then proceeded to classify the taller and healthier individuals as members of the upper classes. She also argued that, though all classes engaged in exercise, upper-class people only did so for ‘fun’.
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One assumes that the implication of this is that skeletal remodelling due to stress associated with heavy work would indicate a person of lower social status. It is difficult to make such a judgement as it is possible to overstress the body even when exercising for pleasure.
As mentioned above, some of Bisel ’s more academic work has been published posthumously, most notably in a chapter in
The Natural History of Pompeii
,a volume edited by Jashemski and Meyer.
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The appellations ‘Pretty Woman’ and ‘Soldier’ have continued to be employed, as have other rather spurious interpretations of occupation and social status (see Chapter 8). While it is essential to state that it is quite likely that Bisel may have altered the way her findings were presented over time, their inclusion in academic texts continues the tradition of a culture of bodies. Some of her creations have now achieved almost legendary status and continue to be routinely described, especially in popular literature, with names and interpretations that have apparently been accepted as part of a tradition, like ‘the Ring Lady,’‘the Soldier’ and the slave girl cradling a baby from a wealthy family.
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While the in fluences of Bulwer-Lytton’s novel may be more apparent at the popular level, they are still clearly discernible in Bisel’s scientific writings. This approach is insidious because the information is presented under the aegis of science despite the fact that the conclusions extend beyond the parameters of the discipline. Ultimately, this creates a perception of the past that owes far more to sentiment than science.
fi
rst century
The early years of the twentyfirst century have been marked by the production of popular works with academic pretensions. These are often authored by acknowledged scholars, who presumably aim to make recent research on the sites destroyed by Mt Vesuvius more accessible to the general public. Such works demonstrate the continuation of the culture of bodies in Pompeii and, by association, Herculaneum.
Wilkinson, for example, in a book that was written to accompany a BBC documentary, creates a vignette based on the victims from the so-called House of Julius Polybius (IX, xiii, 1–3). He interpreted the thirteen skeletons found in two rooms on the ground floor at the back of the house as a family group.
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Of these, he singled out four for discussion. A woman wearing a considerable quantity of gold jewellery and clutching a bronze vase and a cloth bag filled with silver and bronze coins was interpreted as probably being the wife of Julius Polybius. Apart from describing her associated valuables in detail, he also provided information about her age, height, dental health and skeletal pathology. Next to this individual was found the skeleton of a girl in the final stages of pregnancy. Her age-at-death was estimated to be between 16 and 18 years. Her stature and pathological changes to her bones were also described. It was assumed that this skeleton was that of the daughter of Julius Polybius. The remains of a male were found close to these skeletons. He was described as being slumped with his mouth open and his head leaning close to the wall. His left arm was outstretched, apparently reaching for a small glass bottle, while his right arm was bent with the hand clutching at his chest. Without the benefit of any kind of residue analysis, Wilkinson suggested that this bottle might have held poison, with the implication that the victim had chosen to end his life prematurely rather than face the cataclysmic effects of the eruption. Unaccountably, this verbal tableau is completed with the statement that outside, in the garden, ‘a pet turtle lay dead’.
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Butterworth and Laurence use the skeletons that were discovered in this house in a similar fashion.
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They are no more circumspect with respect to the evidence and present a fairly elaborate portrait of the individuals and the circumstances of their demise. Two males in one room are interpreted as being about 60 years of age, the younger being Julius Polybius. The other was possibly Julius Philippus, who may, on the basis of minimal evidence, have been Polybius’ elder brother. They postulate that the pregnant girl is the 18-year-old daughter of Polybius, who was close to term with her second child. Also in the room was a woman, described as about 40 years of age and a ‘prolific childbearer’. Near them was a man in his late twenties, who was interpreted as the young woman’s husband. It was suggested that the other victims in this room were siblings or cousins of the pregnant woman, or slaves. They speculate that if all the younger people in the room were the offspring of Julius Polybius’ assumed wife, she would have been delivering babies every third year until eight years before the eruption.
They suggest that the extended family became separated into two rooms as a result of a three-year-old boy having to be chased by his ‘selfless aunt’ after he ran outside to view the event. Later a young male slave was sent to find them and they were forced to seek shelter in the nearest accessible room. The authors assume that the female was the wife of Julius Philippus and that the small boy was the son of the pregnant daughter of Julius Polybius. They conclude the scene with a fantastic reconstruction of the thoughts and actions of these people in their last moments.
These remarkable scenarios require consideration. The House of Julius Polybius was excavated between 1966 and 1978. The first attribution of ownership of this house was based on election slogans for
C. Iulius Polybius
that were painted at the entrance of the house and on nearby walls. Alleged ownership was transferred to one
C. Iulius Philippus
on the basis of the discovery of a bronze seal in a wooden cupboard under the garden portico.
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It hardly needs to be stated that these attributions of ownership are based on spurious evidence. Further, the skeletons that were found in two adjacent rooms in this house do not yield sufficient information to interpret them as those of the owner’s family, let alone enable their relationships to each other to be established. It has variously been suggested that these skeletons may have been those of slaves who were supervising repair work on the house or of the actual workmen.
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The skeletons that were discovered in this house were studied by a multinational and multidisciplinary team in the last years of the twentieth century.
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This work included an attempt to extract DNA from these bones.
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While it was possible to detect the presence of human DNA, there was insufficient preservation to identify any genetic relationship between individuals found in this house. Relationships between individuals were, therefore, based on direct observations and measurement of the skeletons. Three tentative adult couples were postulated amongst these samples, solely on the basis of sex, age at death and their possible proximity at the time of death. The last was little more than a guess, as the skeletons had been removed from their originalfind spots and stored in boxes. These assumed couples form the basis of the popular reconstructions already discussed, though the authors suggest a number of possibilities in terms of their relationships to each other as well as their status.
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Regardless, all these interpretations are highly speculative and are not supported by any clear evidence.
The only biological evidence that could possibly be used to argue for a genetic relationship between any of the individuals found in the house was the apparent discovery of spina bifida occulta on two of the sacra of the victims. However, it should be noted that the sacrum of one of these skeletons was incomplete and the identification of this abnormality was equivocal.
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Spina bifida occulta is the least significant form of spina bifida, which is the result of failure of the neural tube to fully close in the embryo. A number of conditions can occur when the neural tube fails to close. The cranial vault and the brain do not form if the tube does not close at the head end of the embryo. This condition is known as anencephaly and it is not compatible with survival after birth. If the tube fails to close at the tail end of the embryo, a range of spina bifida conditions with varying degrees of severity occur. Spina bifida occulta involves incomplete fusion of the posterior neural arch and can affect one or more segments of the sacrum. It tends to be clinically insignificant, as the underlying neural tissue tends not to be involved; only the bone of the neural arches fails to fuse. It is often only discovered incidentally when an individual is x-rayed, though the skin in the sacral region is generally marked by a hairy patch. The expression of spina bifida occulta is based on both genetic and environmental factors. It has been observed with a frequency of between 5 and 25 per cent in modern populations.
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Assuming that there were actually two cases of this disorder in the skeletal sample from the House of Julius Polybius, it was argued that the two afflicted individuals were closely related. They were the pregnant female, who was aged between 16 and 18 years of age and a child who was aged between eight and nine years. It was argued that the pregnant girl had returned to her parents’ house with her husband for the delivery of her baby.
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