The Pompeii Cast Project 2024 Field Season Report

Finally after a long hiatus caused mostly by the pandemic, the Pompeii Cast Project team were able to return to Pompeii and X-ray more of the iconic casts.

Getting back onsite was not straightforward. The pandemic halted our work at a critical stage and before being able to proceed we had to put in place a new Memorandum of Understanding as our previous one, signed in 2017, had run its time. Other researchers from Europe and the USA had been able to return to the site long before Australians were permitted to travel and being permitted to work in Pompeii has traditionally depended heavily on personal contact. Estelle Lazer met with the Parco Archeologico di Pompeii as soon as she could in 2022 and again spent several days on site in November 2023, in which time she also met the current director, Professor Gabriel Zuchtriegel.

The team comprising Estelle Lazer, the project leader, Dr Alain Middleton, X-ray engineer Stijn Luyck and our radiographer Julia Ridder assembled on 25 April. The first days of our field season were spent in team meetings which were followed by two days of X-raying and discussion. We X-rayed the first cast ever made, two others cast in 1863, three victims cast in the so-called House of the Golden Bracelet in 1974, and a victim on display in the Via dell’Abbondanza. The results of these days, along with the CT Scans and X-rays achieved in  2015, 2018 and 2019, will allow us not just to glean information about these victims but also assist us in our quest to understand how the casts were made.

We are also actively engaged in publishing and publicising the results of our work. So far, one article in the Papers of the British School of Rome and two book chapters have appeared, as well as numerous public lectures, including the AD Trendall lecture for the Australian Academy of the Humanities at ASCS 2021 and two for the Getty Museum in 2023.  We are also delighted to report that preparation for the forthcoming exhibition that primarily focusses on the results of the Pompeii Cast Project is in full swing ahead - watch this space!

We would like to acknowledge the assistance of the Office of General Counsel, the Research Office and the School of Humanities professional staff for their assistance in going beyond and above any form of normal to help us achieve the new Memorandum of Understanding without which our work could not have proceeded. Claudia Pfeiffer of Academy Europe deployed her considerable experience to find us last minute accommodation when the apartments we had booked and paid for months before were summarily cancelled on us days before the work was due to start. We thank Dr Girolamo Ferdinando de Simone for his on-going support and for helping us to deliver the new data to the Parco Archeologico di Pompeii. We are always grateful to the Department of Classics and Ancient History and the team at the Chau Chak Wing Museum for their ongoing commitment to our project and to so many other people for their continued interest. Finally, we acknowledge and thank the Parco Archeologico di Pompeii for enabling us to do this work.

We thank the Latin Summer School for funds that helped to defray Estelle’s accommodation costs from 2022 and 2023, the Classical Association for funds that allowed us to contribute to the daily expenses of our team of experts, who generously donated their time,  their knowledge, and the cost of their airfares. Kind donations from the History Teachers Association of NSW, Chifley College Senior Campus and Chester Hill High School enabled us to defray the accommodation costs of the team over the April 2024 field season. We plan to keep you all up to date with the exhibition and our ongoing progress via the Project blogsite.

Estelle Lazer and Kathryn Welch