Product Description
A vivid portrayal of life in Pompeii's sister city, this book includes a detailed description of the ancient Villa dei Papiri, on which the present Getty Museum in Malibu is modeled. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Brings Herculaneum to life
Herculaneum comes alive with this book. It's more than a description of the archaelogical site. It's a sensitive and imaginative account of what life would have been like and what was going on when the volcano errupted. The prose style is crisp and readable. Pictures are only black and white. Some are blurry. But it's not a site guide. Highly recommended.

Well written
Besides the usual detail related to the uncovering, this author does an excellent job of tieing the structures to the actual life of the citizens of Herculaneum prior to the envelopement.For example, using discovered documents he has a chapter describing the lawsuit described in those documents.

2,000 Year-Old Time Capsule
This fascinating look into a volcano created time capsule of life in the Roman Empire provided this reviewer a strange kind of therapy. Because the event happened so fast everything in the Roman Town of Herculaneum was left exactly as it was when the earth quake followed by the fast moving flood of thick pyroclastic waves swept over and buried the entire town and many of it's inhabitants. Buried deep under a volcanic matrix and ash the locations of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and other small towns were forgotten, new towns and villages were built atop the ruins and every hundred years or so Vesuvius erupted again burying Herculaneum deeper as well as some of the new communities built above them. The last eruption occurred in 1944 before the volcano once more assumed a mask of harmlessness.
It's apparent that after both Pompeii and Herculaneum are totally excavated and studied that they will again be buried in yet another eruption of the nearby mountain. In Herculaneum, the town has been slowly, painstakingly freed from the rock-hard casings entombing it using picks, drills and finally soft brushes. But it was built between two streams flowing from the volcano and will once more be the low point in the path of the next pyroclastic and/or lava flows. Since the Italian Government doesn't have the funds to properly protect and excavate most of Herculaneum that is still encased under 65 to 100 feet of volcanic rock, it may be best that it isn't even uncovered and instead is saved another few thousand years for future, and wiser archeologists to uncover and marvel at. The town really is amazing. Ironically, the pyroclastic flow, unlike lava, didn't destroy everything it touched. Food, fruits, ropes, fish nets, wooden furniture, cloth, even a private library of 1800 papyrus scrolls of books and plays survived. In the 1980's skeletons were found on what was originally the community's beach, but is now 500 yards inland. Sea level is now 13 feet higher than the beach of 2,000 years ago (I wonder how that squares with Global Warming theories?) and the skeletons of unsuccessful fleeing residents of Herculaneum were accidentally discovered when a drainage system was being built.
Since Roman's practiced cremation, these dozens of complete skeletons have provided archeologists with their first look at the health of the average Roman during the Roman Empire. One of the skeletons was that of a soldier complete with his armor, sword and his carpenter tools attached to his belt. Roman Legionnaires were also required to be skilled craftsman as well as soldiers. Roman men averaged 5'7" and women of the time averaged 5' 1 and 1/2" in height and are two obvious examples of the kind of information the skeletons provided today's experts. Teeth were in excellent shape probably because of the lack of sugar in the average Roman diet (they preferred honey). Lead poisoning was not a major problem as many experts have postulated.
Herculaneum is a treasure trove of history. Jewelry, household items of all kinds including toys, wooden furniture, art works, statues, books, architecture, even the uneaten food left on tables at meal time was encased and preserved for the future historians. I'm not an expert in architecture but as I read this book I could see the history of architecture unfolding before my eyes. It wasn't difficult to see how in the future the contemporary world around us will fit into the continuing development pattern as well. Will archeologists of the future be digging up our local Malls and trying to picture our civilization through their reconstruction?
Reading this book provided this reviewer with a new prospective on history. It freed the mind from worry about America's current political and economic problems because it puts them in their proper place. They are only a blip in the history of the world. This book is so well written that the Roman Town of Herculaneum comes alive for the reader. It's possible to visualize its citizens and slaves going about their daily lives as if one was hovering over them in an invisible time traveling observation bubble. And this book definitely confirms that the Romans were a very sexy and erotic civilization. They liked their fleshly pleasures. They were also the cleanest of the early western civilizations. Roman baths were social centers of the population and individual homes had running water and constantly flushing latrines. This book is a wonderful, very enlightening read. It's more like fiction, but the truth is sometimes stranger than fiction.

Very Disappointing
Because this book was paired with the book Pompeii, I was expecting a book full of great images.It was not!It is virtually the same book published by Harper & Row in 1966.All the pictures are black and white and about the same quality as Amedeo Maiuri's who can be forgiven as his guide to Herculaneum was published in 1962.Having read Maiuri's book, I found Deiss's descriptions very similar.A very disappointing purchase!

Best book on Herculaneum
Very few people know of the other Napolitan city that was destroy in 69AD by the eruption of Vesuvius and because of this there are few good books that have been written on Herculaneum. Deiss' book on Herculaneum is probably the cream of the crop and an essential one to any scholar or amateur classicist/archaeologist who is interested in the other little seaside city. Deiss provides a good overview of the difference between the destruction of Herculaneum and the destruction of Pompeii which had a great effect on the excavation of the cities. He also chronicles the discovery of Herculaneum which occurred before Pompeii and the birth of modern archaeology through that discovery.

Deiss also gives a good overview of the town and what is know about it, the objects that were found there and how different buildings were used.

Essential to anyone interested in Pompeii, Herculaneum or ancient Roman culture. ... Read more

Product Description
This book is an account of an almost completely neglected archaeological epic, the uncovering and restoration of all the classical monuments of Rome during the French occupation (1809-14). This was the first large-scale archaeological programme in the city. Based on archives in Rome and Paris, the archaeology of these five years is placed against its essential background: the fate of the monuments since antiquity and the contemporary Napoleonic political and cultural history. Mr Ridley describes the enormously complicated organisation which carried out the work and identifies the leading administrators, archaeologists and architects. The bulk of the work is a detailed account of the excavation and restoration work on the Forum Romanum, the Colosseum and the Forum of Trajan, the main classical monuments. There are numerous illustrations of the monuments both before and after the French intervention, as well as unpublished plans from the archives. There is an extensive specialist index. The book is intended for anyone interested in archaeology, in Napoleonic Europe and above all, in Rome. ... Read more

Product Description
Collecting antiquities was a princely pastime that required time, space, money, access to the art market, and to the right advisers. Such collections were gathered in competition with other princes and displayed in the owner's residences as one of the many manifestations of a choreographed court culture. The aim was to present the prince and collector as a person of taste and discernment; frequently the collection was also used to make political statements that had little to do with interest in ancient art. Cosimo I de' Medici (1519-1574) collected antiquities from the moment he became Duke of Florence in January 1537. In so doing he continued a family tradition from the previous century and also connected with the cultural politics of the main line of the house of Medici. In some cases he even managed to recuperate antiquities once owned by Lorenzo il Magnifico. His collections, growing over nearly four decades, were also fed by gifts, chance discoveries, and acquisitions from Rome. The antiquities were stored and displayed in several rooms in Palazzo Vecchio and Palazzo Pitti, where they could be admired by visitors to the court. Scholars and artists also showed interest in these objects and started to develop an art historical framework that took into account differences in provenance, style, or material. This study is exploring the collections and the collector's aims in putting together one of the major examples of a princely collection of antiquities. Both the categories of the objects and the forms of display adopted at different times during Cosimo's reign are discussed in the historical context of a developing and expanding independent principality. Using a wealth of (mostly unpublished) archival sources, this volume attempts to reconstruct as far as possible the collection and its display in Florence. It also sets out the archaeological and artistic context of Cosimo's collection of antiquities that survives in part in the Florentine museums. ... Read more

Product Description
Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Museo Nazionale Della Magna Grecia, Capitoline Museums, National Museum of Rome, National Archaeological Museum, Museo Egizio, Naples National Archaeological Museum, Secret Museum, Naples, Museum of Oriental Art, National Etruscan Museum, South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, National Museum of Oriental Art, Pigorini National Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography. Excerpt:Michelangelo's design for Capitoline Hill, now home to the Capitoline Museums. Engraved by Étienne Dupérac, 1568. The Capitoline Museums (Italian Musei Capitolini ) are a group of art and archeological museums in Piazza del Campidoglio , on top of the Capitoline Hill in Rome , Italy . The museums are contained in three palazzi surrounding a central trapezoidal piazza in a plan conceived by Michelangelo Buonarroti in 1536 and executed over a period of over 400 years. The history of the museums can be traced to 1471, when Pope Sixtus IV donated a collection of important ancient bronzes to the people of Rome and located them on Capitoline Hill. Since then, the museums' collection has grown to include a large number of ancient Roman statues, inscriptions, and other artifacts; a collection of medieval and Renaissance art; and collections of jewels , coins , and other items. The museums are owned and operated by the municipality of Rome . The statue of a mounted rider in the centre of the piazza is of Emperor Marcus Aurelius . It is a copy, the original being housed on-site in the Capitoline museum. Many Roman statues were destroyed on the orders of Christian Church authorities in the Middle Ages; this statue was preserved in the erroneous belief that it depicted the Emperor Constantine, who made Christianity the official state religion of the Roman empire . Buildings The Palazzo dei Conservatori is one of the three ma... ... Read more

Product Description
A description and analysis of the visible remains of insula V.ii in Ostia antica. The block comprises thirteen buildings of varying character, among them two domus (House of Fortuna Annonaria and House of the Porch), apartment houses, a bath building (Baths of the Philosopher), industrial buildings and shops. Particular attention is paid to the different building phases of the House of the Porch. ... Read more

Product Description
This work throws fresh light on the island's past and seeks to provide a concise, up-to-date guide to Sicilian archaeology, covering the period from prehistory to Constantine the Great. It should be of interest to students and lecturers in European archaeology and ancient history. ... Read more

Product Description
This title tells the story of how the Romans coped with the most serious threat to their hold on Britain and explains the important contribution archaeology has made towards understanding the revolt. ... Read more

Product Description
This collection of original essays focuses upon Roman Italy where, with over 400 cities, urbanization was at the very centre of Italian civilization. Informed by an awareness of the social and anthropological issues of recent research, these contributions explore not only questions of urban origins, interaction with the countryside and economic function, but also the social use of space within the city and the nature of the development process.; These studies are aimed not only at ancient historians and classical archaeologists, but are directed towards those working in the related fields of urban studies in the Mediterranean world and elsewhere and upon the general theory of towns and complex societies. ... Read more