Interesting article on how the current ruins of Pompeii (and Herculaneum) are a collaboration between the Ancient and Modern.
One interesting bit:
'But there are much wider issues at play than ancient Roman dress sense. For a start, these strangely ambivalent objects [plaster casts of the dead citizenry] bring us face to face with our own voyeurism. Why does it seem OK for us to gawp at these disaster victims, when it would be decidedly not OK to gawp at the death agonies of victims of a modern train crash or terror attack?
Is it because, as some parents at the Getty suggested to their kids, they are just so ancient that they don't matter to us in the same way? As if in becoming archaeological specimens they lost their right to human privacy? Or is it the simple fact that these are not Roman bodies that gives us licence to peer?
Surely, we don't imagine that a lump of 19th Century plaster poured into a void in the lava has any "right to privacy" – still less (as in the Getty example) a 20th Century copy of a 19th Century lump of plaster. As the other parents had it, they're "just models".'
It actually calls to mind some of the controversies over Egyptian mummies, or the repatriation of Native American remains. I suspect that a big reason why the Pompeiian victims are okay to "gawp at" is because there are clear modern successors, just outside the sites, going about their business, apparently unconcerned.
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Pompeii’s not-so-ancient Roman remains
Is Pompeii an ancient or modern wonder? Its ruins have been rebuilt and the bodies of the volcano’s victims are plaster casts, says Mary Beard.
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Funny you should mention that. I'm watching Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii at the moment. Mary Beard is being silly about the plaster casts. All that was left of those poor devils was a space with bones at the bottom. That's why the archaeologists poured plaster in.
I also wonder if she is confusing ash and lava. But yes, the privacy of the victims is a valid question to ask. My answer to it is that we’re entirely too concerned about the ‘dignity’ of human remains. But that’s the point; we can’t answer either way unless the question is asked.
Oh, I agree it’s a weird psych/soc/anthro issue that’s completely valid to raise.
I, for one, am not so enamored of this particular mound of meat I walk around in that I need it treated with any excessive care after it’s stopped moving. I do want an elaborate grave stone — in my memory, though, not as a house for my dead body (e.g., http://flic.kr/p/c86kQU).
OK I have never wanted a grave stone before, but now I do. It should read: “We buried all the pieces we could find”.