Profs & Pints Alameda: The World Mount Vesuvius Buried

Profs and Pints Alameda presents: “The World Mount Vesuvius Buried,” on what we’re learning by the uncovering of ancient Roman towns buried in volcanic ash, with Michael Anderson, a professor of Classical archaeology at San Francisco State University who has spent nearly 30 years studying and excavating Pompeii.

[Tickets available only online, at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/alameda-vesuvius .]

The cataclysmic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE entombed towns, farms, and villas in ash and debris, dooming those around at the time but preserving for future generations a unique and invaluable window onto Roman and Pre-Roman daily life.

Learn about the fascinating finds of archeologists at work there with Michael Anderson, director of the Via Consolare Project excavations of ancient Pompeii, author of Space, Movement and Visibility in Pompeian Houses, and co-author of House of the Surgeon, Pompeii: Excavations in the Casa del Chirurgo.

He’ll discuss how what Vesuvius buried was lost and largely forgotten for centuries, and how the discovery and early excavation of these sites in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries would transform forever the disciplines of art history and archaeology. It also greatly enriched our understanding of ancient Roman daily life, a process that continues to this day, making Pompeii the longest continuously excavated site in the world.

Evidence from these sites has provided some of the clearest answers to questions about what life was really like for both the rich and the poor in ancient Italy in Roman times. Dr. Anderson will discuss what we’ve learned through the unearthing of houses and wall paintings, as well as the remains of graffiti, bakeries, clothes cleaners, and taverns and of evidence of politics, elections, and graffiti.

What was it like to experience a cataclysmic volcanic eruption? Did anyone escape? We’ll explore the impact of the eruption on the nearby settlements of Pompeii and Herculaneum using evidence from Pliny the Younger’s eyewitness account combined with scientific study of the bodies of those who perished and the traces left by those who may have escaped.

Finally, we’ll look at what is still being excavated and why. We will examine recent—and, in some cases, still unpublished—discoveries from active and on-going excavations. You’ll learn how these sites continue to enrich our understanding of ancient life nearly two thousand years ago, not only during the sites’ final years and hours but throughout the sites’ long histories from foundation to destruction. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A cast of a corpse of a Mt. Vesuvius eruption victim at Pompeii’s “Garden of the Fugitives” archaeological site. (Photo by Daniele Florio / Wikimedia Commons.)