My Career is in Ruins! @coolarchaeology - Tumblr Blog

Ancient Pompeii Doctor Identified by Medical Instruments Found in Cast

A doctor caught while trying to flee the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, carrying the tools of his profession. The finding is the latest extraordinary discovery at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, made more than sixty years after the excavation of the Orto dei Fuggiaschi.

The breakthrough came from the study of a small case hidden inside the plaster of a human cast, found during the investigations directed by Amedeo Maiuri in 1961. The area, then occupied by a vineyard, revealed casts were of fourteen people caught in the pyroclastic cloud in a desperate attempt to save themselves.

Recent analyses of the materials stored in the deposits of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii have brought to light an exceptionally interesting personal trousseau: a small box made of organic material with metal elements, a fabric bag with bronze and silver coins and a series of instruments compatible with a medical kit.

How the physician of ancient Pompeii was identified

Diagnostic investigations using X-rays and tomography at the Maria Rosaria Nursing Home have revealed a slate plate inside the case, -likely used for preparing medical or cosmetic substances - and small metal instruments that can be interpreted as surgical tools. These findings support the hypothesis that the victim was a doctor, offering a rare and valuable clue about his profession.

The use of advanced diagnostic technologies, including CT scans supported by Artificial Intelligence and 3D reconstructions, made it possible to analyse the content of the cast without compromising its integrity. This approach opens new possibilities for studying Pompeian casts and has also uncovered previously unknown details of the chest’s sophisticated mechanical design, including a toothed-wheel locking system.

The research is the result of interdisciplinary work that has seen archaeologists, restorers, physical anthropologists, archaeobotanists, numismatists, radiologists, diagnostic technicians and digital modelling specialists working together, restoring not just an object, but an interrupted life story.

"Already two thousand years ago, there were those who were not just doctors during set hours, but doctors at all times—even in the moment of their escape from the eruption, cut short by the pyroclastic cloud that engulfed a group of fugitives attempting to leave the city through Porta Nocera." commented Park Director Gabriel Zuchtriegel.

"This man brought his tools with him to be ready to rebuild his life elsewhere, thanks to his profession, but perhaps also to help others. We dedicate this small but significant discovery to all the women and men who today continue to carry out this profession with a very high sense of responsibility and service to the community," Zuchtriegel concluded.

By Fortunato Pinto.

parkchanwoohoo

This is so funny. People never change

patrochilles-or-bust

EVERYONES PICKING ON ME BECAUSE I DONT HAVE THE NEW SHOES MOM I'M NOT POPULAR MOM AND ITS ALL YOUR FAULT!!

parkchanwoohoo

#this could be a literal text message lol#i don't think he's manipulating her lol just being a salty teenager

LITERALLY LMFAO "HIS dad works for MY dad but he looks BETTER than me" is an outraged cry from spoiled teens all throughout time all throughout the world

hexjulia

[neolithic hottie who's been easing back into the modern dating scene]: so when he said he was a pot caster i thought he was a good artisan with a reliable income. But turns out he just talks to himself all day mostly. People don't even come to listen and he doesn't know shit about ceramics. Sometimes one of his friends is there though.

[One eyed priest-king who's been frozen in the ice for 10 000 years next to a mammoth but is starting to thaw]: girl no wayyyyy. What is slip casting a pot btw. The use of that technique (not to be confused with slipware) purportedly only dates back to the Tang Era (618–917).

hexjulia

[cornish tin miner from 3000 years ago]: my deposits may have played a key part in the advances of sophisticated kingdoms and states more than 4,000km (2,485 miles) away. #myDeposits.

victusinveritas

homunculus-argument

Grave offerings and burying the dead with tools and goods is actually such a deeply human thing to do. It's not really even necessarily about how much you believe in a literal afterlife or them taking the tools with them. It's also just going Wait, I'm Not Done Taking Care Of You, let me make you one more pair of socks so your feet won't be cold when you go wherever it is where I can't follow.

twoblogger

It kind of fucks with me that somebody killed ötzi the iceman because ötzi himself is like whatever but the silent presence of human hands that drew back the string of the bow that shot the arrow that killed him is crazy. the idea that there were various people involved in that situation and while one of them has had his last hours painstakingly reconstructed and studied to no end, the others now only exist insofar that an arrowhead had to get into his shoulder somehow. imagine killing someone and then suddenly your entire existence is only a vague shadow implied by the fact that you killed them. much to consider

twoblogger

Testing the mummified bone marrow of ötzi to figure out his ancestry whole time there’s definitely another person, maybe more than one, standing in the room with us but I can never see or speak to them because I only know them through the assurance that they were there too in the form of one single arrowhead. I hate prehistory so much it’s unreal

angel-derangement

I hate it too tbh

kaylmao

10000 YEAR OLD ROCK ART OF GIRAFFES FOUND IN LIBYA LET'S GO

kaylmao

YES!!!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lilacchao

of note: 95% of libya is desert, and giraffes are not found there! but this predates not just the libyan desert, but the entire sahara desert it's a part of! giraffes aren't found there any more and this is a memory of a time when things were giraffier

also apparently this rock art dates across multiple periods spanning thousands of years? but i couldn't find much detail on that so i can't give specifics

but yeah, this isn't just a memory of giraffes, but of giraffes now absent encountered by people just 2000 years (the difference between the late roman republic and today) out of the ice age, in a climate unfamiliar to any of the hundred billion people born since the desertification of the sahara drove the ancient egyptians to the nile, near the start of the agricultural revolution

the time between this and the birth of the sahara was nearly as long as the time between the birth of the sahara and now, in which all recorded history is contained, and all languages we can recognise at all - the language and culture of these people would be totally alien to current libyans, twice the difference between the oldest european language and english, predating all but libya's mountains!

and we have pictures of giraffes of the time! what a beautiful gift from such a distant past

tridentandtales

Greek drinking cup with a skeleton, 1st century BCE

Greek inscription "Purchase and use!"

Altes Museum Berlin 30141

peoplegettingreallymadatghosts

fell for the oldest trick in the book

ophilosoraptoro

severeprincesheep

It's on the wikipedia page that literal sea people attacked out of nowhere?

peoplegettingreallymadatghosts

Never doubt my shitposts again

libationbearers

holding ancient objects is the most insane experience. this pot has the fingerprint of an ancient greek person in it? what if i burst into tears?

ochipi

When handling archaeological human remains gets weird

We’re all professionals, but sometimes you catch yourself realizing how weird things are looking when handling human remains

Trying to shake out clumped together dirt from someone skull

Brushing someone’s teeth with an actual toothbrush, something they have never done in their lives

Comparing someone’s bones to yours

Judging their dental hygiene

When the earworm of the day is Johnny Cash’ s “Ain’t No Grave”.

Scooping someone’s eye sockets clean with a spoon (or just their whole brain)

When some bones are just … off … you judge hard

Talking in your head to them as if they can hear you

archaeo-geek

Yes to all of this.

Also, clearing dirt out of a partial skull cavity with an actual teaspoon felt deeply weird at times, but like, that was the best tool for the job.

thaylepo

Talking to them may start in your head, but if you're alone in that lab you are going to end up talking out loud, apologizing to them as you clean their eye socket, explaining what electronic calipers are as you take measurements, making remarks as you identify certain features like "oh wow you had some pretty good muscle attachments here didn't you, you were a beefy boi huh" or "oh, looks like your lower left bicuspid never fully erupted".

If you don't end up nicknaming them by the end of it it's almost like you're doing it wrong.

ochipi

@thaylepo I once worked on a graveyard that was still active. They gave every skeleton the first name of someone on the graveyard. Turns out one of my colleague’s grandma was buried there and one of the days she wasn’t working there, they chose her name. So yeah that got awkward very quickly

thewanderingarchaeologist

Started singing songs to the younger ones in our depot this year, telling them it'd be alright and that I'd take good care of them...

Also the old lady skeleton we have gets so much respect, her nickname is Lady and we're all in awe of how old she got.

#sharing an office space with approx 20 skeletons rn

historyisntboring

The woman, aged about 50, was buried in a Siberian ice cave and discovered millennia later.

She was a 50 y.o. Siberian woman from 2500 years ago, living a nomadic lifestyle, and look at her tattoos...

Look...

I'm going to cry

gardenstatetait

Permafrost mummies! All these creatures represent a real animal found preserved in the permafrost. There's something so fragile and special about the earth and ice reuniting us with an animal our ancestors would have been so familiar with, that shit makes me cry.

cadaverkeys

fabulous creature?

focsle

I never did a long thing about scrimshaw, so it’s time! At 1 am, apparently.

I think scrimshaw is one of the most fascinating material goods to emerge from the history of the American whaling industry (which is the context I’m discussing here, though of course the artform exists across numerous eras and cultures outside this brief blip of nautical history).

It’s one way to see amatuer art that usually doesn’t often survive in other forms. To see the art project of an ordinary man who was bored and needed something to do with his hands. Others were highly skilled craftsman, creating intricate engravings or mechanically expert tools. The most common scrimshaw was images etched on sperm whale teeth. Sometimes those images came from the maker’s own imagination and sometimes they were copied illustrations. Ships & whaling scenes, women, mythical figures, and patriotic symbols make up the bulk of the visual language in those pieces that survive.

But alongside the teeth were all a manner of carved items: canes, candle holders, pie crimpers, children’s toys, sewing boxes, yarn swifts, corset busks. So much bone fashioned into quiet little homegoods. And it’s that contradiction within scrimshaw that fascinates me. The brutality of the industry, this ivory from an animal that frankly died terribly, that’s then softened into a little domestic item. An object that could have hours to years of work put into it. Some were made to be sold but many were made as gifts. In the long stretches of boredom at sea, in the lull between back-breaking work and life-threatening terror, scrimshaw gives a window into where the minds of these men continually turned. It shows where their hearts were and what they were holding on to over all the years they spent adrift in saltwater and blood and oil. That’s the poetry I see in scrimshaw. Pain and love and longing and creativity and playfulness all bound together in these complicated little pieces that found their way out of the hands of their anonymous makers to preserve a small part of their story.

Some scrimshanders names are known. Frederick Myrick is one of the most well known American whalers, not so much for the scope of his life (of which little is known) but for his scrimshaw. Born in Nantucket in 1808, he first went whaling in 1825 on the Columbus and then again on the Susan 1826-29. In the last few months aboard the Susan, Myrick engraved over 30 sperm whale teeth, all depicting the ship he was on (though there are a handful that depict other vessels). He signed and dated nearly each one. These pieces are often referred to as ‘Susan’s Teeth’ now, and when one comes up at auction it’s not unusual for it to sell for six figures.

Many of the teeth Myrick scrimshawed included an inscribed couplet of his devising: A dark wish for luck that succinctly gets at the violent and unstable heart of American whaling.

“Death to the living, long life to the killers Success to sailor’s wives, and greasy luck to whalers”

Sometimes large scenes were etched on panbones as well.

Moving from scrimshaw on teeth and jawbones, pie crimpers are some of the more common sculptural items. Popular motifs included animals (dogs, snakes, and unicorns/hippocampus are big), body parts (mostly clenched fists or lady’s legs), and geometric designs.

Others were more mechanically complicated, such as automatons and children’s toys with moving parts and gears. Here’s one of a small rocking sailboat, perhaps made for someone’s child or younger sibling.

Sometimes a particular creative fellow created something more eccentric, like this wild writing desk kit fashioned out of a carved panbone and sperm whale teeth.

Another frequently scrimshawed object was a corset busk that would be slid into the front of the garment in order to maintain the posture. A rather private item compared to others. And one with a very on-the-nose message of wearing close to one’s heart the memory of someone who’d be gone for 3-4 years, who might never come home again. On some level, so many of these daily objects whispered ‘forget me not’, ‘think of me while I’m gone’.

There’s something tender to all the various domestic items that were fashioned on the job so long and far from home, but it’s the yarn swifts that really captivate me. They were one of the most complicated pieces of scrimshaw to make, with over one hundred different pieces that would have to be carved. It could take someone the length of the voyage (2-4 years) to complete a single one. Unlike teeth which were comparatively very quick to make and were frequently intended to be sold, it’s very unlikely that a swift was made with the aim of selling it because of the significant labor that went into it. They were almost certainly all gifts, and very special ones at that. Every time I see one I can just feel the love towards its intended recipient radiating off of it.

Scrimshaw captures a specific snapshot of a moment in time. On a broader scale it’s a surviving reminder of a bloody industry that flared up and winked out, preserved in the form of a long-lost ship and the spout of a long-dead whale inked on a yellowing tooth. But that snapshot also reveals the emotional world of the men who were caught up in such an industry: what they valued, what they thought about, what they missed, and what they wanted to be remembered of them.

homunculus-argument

systlin

Something I find incredibly cool is that they’ve found neandertal bone tools made from polished rib bones, and they couldn’t figure out what they were for for the life of them.

Until, of course, they showed it to a traditional leatherworker and she took one look at it and said “Oh yeah sure that’s a leather burnisher, you use it to close the pores of leather and work oil into the hide to make it waterproof. Mine looks just the same.”

“Wait you’re still using the exact same fucking thing 50,000 years later???”

“Well, yeah. We’ve tried other things. Metal scratches up and damages the hide. Wood splinters and wears out. Bone lasts forever and gives the best polish. There are new, cheaper plastic ones, but they crack and break after a couple years. A bone polisher is nearly indestructible, and only gets better with age. The more you use a bone polisher the better it works.”

It’s just.

50,000 years. 50,000. And over that huge arc of time, we’ve been quietly using the exact same thing, unchanged, because we simply haven’t found anything better to do the job.

saxifraga-x-urbium

i also like that this is a “ask craftspeople” thing, it reminds me of when art historians were all “the fuck” about someone’s ear “deformity” in a portrait and couldn’t work out what the symbolism was until someone who’d also worked as a piercer was like “uhm, he’s fucked up a piercing there”. interdisciplinary shit also needs to include non-academic approaches because crafts & trades people know shit ok

assasue

One of my professors often tells us about a time he, as and Egyptian Archaeologist, came down upon a ring of bricks one brick high. In the middle of a house. He and his fellow researchers could not fpr the life of them figure out what tf it could possibly have been for. Until he decided to as a laborer, who doesnt even speak English, what it was. The guy gestures for my prof to follow him, and shows him the same ring of bricks in a nearby modern house. Said ring is filled with baby chicks, while momma hen is out in the yard having a snack. The chicks can’t get over the single brick, but mom can step right over. Over 2000 years and their still corraling chicks with brick circles. If it aint broke, dont fix it and always ask the locals.

anx1ous-op0ssum

I read something a while back about how pre-columbian Americans had obsidian blades they stored in the rafters of their houses. The archaeologists who discovered them came to the conclusion that the primitive civilizations believed keeping them closer to the sun would keep the blades sharper.

Then a mother looked at their findings and said “yeah, they stored their knives in the rafters to keep them out of reach of the children.”

whatevercomestomymind

Omg the ancient child proofing add on tho lol

pbrim

I remember years ago on a forum (email list, that’s how old) a woman talking about going to a museum, and seeing among the women’s household objects a number of fired clay items referred to as “prayer objects”. (Apparently this sort of labeling is not uncommon when you have something that every house has and appears to be important, but no-one knows what it is.) She found a docent and said, “Excuse me, but I think those are drop spindles.” “Why would you think that, ma’am?” “Because they look just like the ones my husband makes for me. See?” They got all excited, took tons of pictures and video of her spinning with her spindle. When she was back in the area a few years later, they were still on display, but labeled as drop spindles.

catchester

So ancient Roman statues have some really weird hairstyles. Archaeologists just couldn’t figure them out. They didn’t have hairspray or modern hair bands, or elastic at all, but some of these things defied gravity better than Marge Simpson’s beehive.

Eventually they decided, wigs. Must be wigs. Or maybe hats. Definitely not real hair.

A hairdresser comes a long, looks at a few and is like, “Yeah, they’re sewn.”

“Don’t be silly!” the archaeologists cry. “How foolish, sewn hair indeed! LOL!”

So she went away and recreated them on real people using a needle and thread and the mystery of Roman hairstyles was solved.

She now works as a hair archaeologist and I believe she has a YouTube channel now where she recreates forgotten hairstyles, using only what they had available at the time.

sammysdewysensitiveeyes

Okay, I greatly appreciate the discussion here about the need for interdisciplinary work in academia, and the need to reach outside of academia and talk to specialists when looking at the uses of tools, but somehow people always have to turn this into a “gotcha!” where the stuffy academics get shown up (even though this very thread shows some archeologists reaching out to craftspeople to ask about how tools are used because they recognize the need for that knowledge and expertise).

“A hairdresser comes a long, looks at a few and is like, “Yeah, they’re sewn.”

“Don’t be silly!” the archaeologists cry. “How foolish, sewn hair indeed! LOL!”

So she went away and recreated them on real people using a needle and thread and the mystery of Roman hairstyles was solved.”

Did they? Did they really? The archeologists all laughed at the plucky hairdresser and then she proved her theory by simply recreating the styles?

See, what actually happened is that Janet Stephens (the hairdresser/hair archeologist in this post), who published an article about her theory in The Journal of Roman Archeology in 2008, spent about 6 years of research pursuing her idea that perhaps Roman hairstyles were sewn hair and not wigs. She did both hands-on experimentation sewing the actual hair, and more traditional research reading through a ton of sources. This is coming from an interview done with Stephens herself:

“Lots and lots of reading, poring over exhibition catalogs, back searching the footnotes to the reading and reading some more! It helped that I am fluent in Italian and, in 2006, I took a German for reading class. Working in my spare time, the research took 6 years.”

“I am an independent researcher, but my husband is a professor of Italian at the Johns Hopkins University, so I have library privileges there. We are friendly with colleagues in the Classics/Archaeology department and at the Walters Art Museum. They were kind enough to send me articles and clippings, read drafts and help with some picky Latin, though I try not to impose.”

(Source: http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/14729)

Wow, so people in the Classics/Archeology department and at the art museum sent her articles and clippings and HELPED her with her research as opposed to laughing at her in their gentleman’s club! It’s almost like people working the archeology/art history these days aren’t all stuffy old white guys from the 1950’s!

Stephens also presented her work at the Archeological Institute of America Conference, and according to the interview I cited above, it was apparently well received: “It seemed to create a a lot of buzz and people said they enjoyed it. It’s not every conference where you go to the poster session and see “heads on pikestaffs”!”

Like, there’s plenty to be said about the ivory tower and the need for interdisciplinary work, and the racism/sexism etc. that newer researchers are working against, but framing this story as “hairdresser totally shows up the archeologists with her common sense!” is needlessly shitting on the academics involved here (and the humanities in general have been struggling to maintain funding at many universities in the US, they don’t need to be further attacked), as well as greatly over-simplifying and downplaying Janet Stephens’ achievement. I think it’s more respectful to acknowledge the six years of work that she put into the project than to tell the story like she just sewed some hair and then all the archeologists’ monocles popped out.

the-nettle-knight

I want to point out that the original post actually fundamentally misunderstands the original article. This was not a case of the archaeologists not recognising the artefact type and a leather worker identifying them, this was a case of the artefact being so unexpected in this context, that it was almost missed. Here is a direct quote from the article:

“The first three found were fragments less than a few centimeters long and might not have been recognized without experience working with later period bone tools. It is not something normally looked for in this time period.”

The archaeological team almost missed them because these bone fragments were both tiny and unexpected as “[the] technology [was] previously associated only with modern humans”. As in, Neanderthals had not been shown to have even been capable to make these artefacts before that point. I don’t think people quite understand how big of a deal this is - this is about the equivalent of finding pottery in a modern human group about 20 000 years ago (they haven’t but that’s the level of *that shouldn’t be there*)

This was identified *by the archaeologists working on the project* because they’d found them before. They fully knew what these artefacts were in the first place, they just didn’t expect to find them there.

Then to prove it, they replicated the use-wear by buying a modern tool off the Internet and doing microscopic analysis. There was not a single modern leather worker mentioned in either the article linked or the actual paper put out. That is absolutely something that would have been acknowledged in both of the papers.

This paper was revolutionary in our understanding of Neanderthal crafting capabilities, recognisied by brilliant and diligent archaeologists and this entire narrative of incapable stuck up archaeologists is an insult to their work.

The women who recognised that the blades were being stored out of reach of children were also archaeologists. Janet Stephens’ research is part of a legitimate branch of archaeological research called Experimental Archaeology. Experimental archaeology has been practiced academically/professionally since the 80s. I’m a hobbiest in a lot of historical crafts and have been the person that a colleague turned to when struggling to identify an artefact. We were able to figure out what it probably was because I knew what use-wear to look for and how to find parallels.

The narrative that archaeologists are opposed to interdisciplinary work is very frustrating as so many of us, including myself, are strong proponents for it. We are very happy to talk to any and all professionals who will talk to us and highly value modern parallels (sometimes a bit too much, actually)

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

My Career is in Ruins!