Vesuvius, Pompeii, and Neighboring Towns -- the 79 AD Disaster

Ten week lecture/class series:  Dates, time, and location to be announced.

A university level (non-credit) course at the Arlington Learning in Retirement Institute (ALRI) on Vesuvius, Pompeii, and Neighboring Towns -- the 79 AD Disaster, taught by SMATCH Board Member Tom Wukitsch.  Registration with ALRI and ALRI course fees applicable.

Tom Wukitsch teaches Roman History at the Arlington Learning in Retirement Institute and is a member of the board of SMATCH.  His fields of specialization are Archeometry, Roman Archeology, and Roman History.

He recently returned from four years of residency in Rome.  During that period, he was a member of the Gruppo Archeologico Romano (GAR) and provided teaching materials for courses  taught in the English Language section of that organization.  He also wrote many short articles on Roman history and culture for the Veneto Views, the U.S. Embassy newsletter, which were also used in other publications in Rome.  (Some of that material is available under "GAR" and "Veneto" headings at http://www.mmdtkw.org.)  He also led tours of historical and cultural sites around Rome and Italy for the U.S. Embassy and for visitors.

Before going to Rome, he was a diplomat in the Foreign Service of the United States serving in the Middle East (Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Tunisia), in Europe, and in the State Department in Washington DC.  In Washington he was the State Department's Desk officer for Algeria and for Cyprus, and was the head of analysis (Division Chief) for the State Department's offices of analysis for the Middle East and for Western and Central Europe. His last position in the State Department was an assignment in the Pentagon as Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary of Defense for Chemical, Nuclear, and Biological Weapons and Missile Proliferation.

Prior to joining the State Department he designed proprietary computer hardware and software in private industry, and before that he served for seven years in the US Navy in a variety of technical, archeological and aviation positions.

(ALRI is affiliated by agreement with George Mason University (GMU), Arlington Public Schools' Career, Technical, and Adult Education Program (APS), and the Elderhostel Institute Network, Inc.)
 
 

In this project, the team members provide an organic and comparative interpretation, melding archeological and historical information with data derived from an interdisciplinary scientific analysis of each specimen.  They have combined their efforts to study, particularly, the green stones, including true emeralds, to identify the places where ancient stones originated, to differentiate materials from mines known to have existed since antiquity, to suggest what type of tools and procedures might have been used in the extraction of  stones and in the creation of ancient jewelry objects, and to suggest routes of trade and exchange among peoples of the past.

Only interdisciplinary collaboration can bring about an exact and complete identification of techniques, dates, and origins and can eliminate distortions caused by the manipulations of dealers, cheap restorers, and others.  Only minute and accurate examination of each piece can separate the false from the authentic.  A scientific study of Roman gemstones, among them stones recovered from the area devastated by the Vesuvius eruption of 79 A.D., will yield additional information about the individual objects and also will provide a broader understanding of the Roman Empire's technological and economic history.(1)

The project is nothing less than the continuation of the process begun by Theophrastus, a disciple of Aristotle, when he described in his Peri Lithon the emerald and its "curious powers" and by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History when he identified twelve kinds of green stones ("smaragdus") and sorted them by the regions of their origin.

For a description of the 79 AD Vesuvius eruption by an eye-witness, click here to read the letters of Pliny the Younger to the great Roman Historian Tacitus.  Tacitus preserved the letters and incorporated details in his own history of the period.  Click here for a description of the eruption, based on modern scientific methodologies, by SMATCH  Board member Tom Wukitsch.