Another find at Pompeii? Must be an interesting place

Today we digress for an update on Pompeii and a pretty cool chariot that has been found on the Archaeological site.

Setting the scene

All the way back in 2017, the people who had been living in a house that had been built over the top of a villa that had been swallowed and preserved when Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, decided they were going to do a little illegal digging.

They dug and dug and dug, obviously looking for treasure, they dug so much that once they were caught, the police found 80 metres of tunnels.

The police really weren’t very pleased with the looter’s efforts. The police are adamant that they are coming down hard on these illegal activities, with the Chief Prosecutor of the city of Torre Annunziata, Nunzio Fragliasso commenting:

The fight against the looting of archaeological sites, both inside and outside the urban area of ancient Pompeii, is certainly one of the primary objectives.

A year later, in 2018, excavations of the stable that one of the tunnels went straight through turned out to be a double-level portico, with the remains of three very well-preserved horses. One was even still saddled and harnessed. Which just demonstrates how quickly this eruption really happened, not even allowing enough time to unharness the horse and open the doors so they could find their own way out.

The villa that this pretty major discovery was at is called Civita Giuliana, and it’s believed to have belonged to someone pretty wealthy. Partly because it’s a villa outside of Pompeii, with its own double-storied stable and reportedly panoramic views of the Mediterranean. But also because in November of 2020, the remains of two men were found. One believed to be a wealthy 30 or 40-year-old, and the other supposedly his younger slave. Both were found together with their plaster casts showing the effects of a pyroclastic surge.

And now here’s Dario Franceschini, the Minister of Culture, commenting on all that Pompeii has given us:

Pompeii continues to amaze with all of its discoveries, and it will continue to do for many years yet, with twenty hectares still to be excavated.

What was found?

In early 2021, officials at the Pompeii archaeological site announced they had once more made an astounding discovery over at Civita Giuliana, just a little northwest of the main Pompeii site. A ceremonial chariot that appeared to be completely intact.

With the Park calling the chariot:

An exceptional discovery … it represents a unique find – which has no parallel in Italy thus far – in an excellent state of preservation.

Finding something so well preserved, and supposedly with all parts included is extremely rare for the time period. We’re talking over 2000 years this chariot has sat buried under tens of layers of volcanic material. While the world goes about its business above, this chariot just sat, waiting for its time to be rediscovered.

The chariot has many iron elements, like metal armrests with bronze decorations, and even mineralised wood. The decorations are intricate and include metal medallions that display depictions of satyrs, nymphs and cupids.

Here’s how the archaeological park described the find:

[The chariot has] iron components, beautiful bronze and tin decorations, [with ropes and floral decorations] almost intact

The belief is that when Vesuvius erupted destroying pretty much everything surrounding it, the walls and roof of the stable collapsed in such a way as to protect the chariot from everything falling on top. And by sheer luck also seemed to have done a pretty good job against 21st century looters, with the tunnels they dug only

Grazing but not damaging the four-wheeled cart.

The 7th of January was the exciting day that the first iron part was found sticking up out of the volcanic material that had literally filled in the empty spaces of everywhere.

After an extensive and very carefully planned excavation, which we’ll touch on in just a moment, the carriage’s main focus is now cleaning so that at some point in the future, restoration and reconstruction could be considered.

Now what’s so special about this particular chariot? I’m sure modes of transport have been found in a plentiful manner all throughout Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the surrounding countryside. And it’s true, they have. But because this particular find was made of metal, as opposed to the quite common wood, it hasn’t disappeared over time, and is also the first chariot to have been found completely intact.

Here’s Massimo Osanna, the interim director of the archaeological park to tell us about the importance of finding the chariot:

The chariot is precisely the kind of find that one wants to find at Pompeii, the really well-articulated, very well-preserved moments in time. And it happens to be in this case an object that is relatively rare despite its ubiquity in the past. This is an extraordinary discovery that advances our understanding of the ancient world.

Excavations

Let’s now have a little look at what it takes to excavate something of such significance.

Taking months of careful planning, the team that uncovered the chariot is, not surprisingly, interdisciplinary. So that means that there were archaeologists, engineers, architects, the all important vulcanologists, restorers, anthropologists and archaeobotantists all working together to slowly, painstakingly remove layer by layer the volcanic material covering the chariot.

The wood found to have been part of the ceiling of the stable, after archaeobotanical analysis, was found to have been deciduous oak, which if you’re in the know, was pretty common throughout the Roman Empire.

Once it was pretty clear that something major was being unearthed, the excavation just got that much more serious, and complex. The whole thing is extremely fragile, reintroducing elements of iron and bronze, not to mention whatever organic material is still present to today’s elements is incredibly involved, making everything that much more difficult.

And so it was decided that the only way to proceed would be by in situ micro-excavation. And would only be carried out by specialists, who were trained in the treatment of wood and metals.

By going so slowly and doing everything at a micro level meant that any time a void was found, plaster was poured in to make a cast of whatever had been around to create the space. This meant that any organic material that has long since disappeared, such as any rope or wooden elements, or even floral decorations, the imprint of these pieces would be preserved. Allowing us, once the whole chariot has been cleaned up, to see the chariot as it may have been before the eruption.

With the excavation complete, the chariot, including all elements, was able to be transported to the resident laboratory at the Archaeological Park at Pompeii, where even more cleaning and removal of that pesky volcanic material could occur, hopefully one day leaving the chariot looking as close to new as possible. And with restoration and reconstruction techniques improving with every passing day. That may well, at some point, be a reality.

What does it mean?

So they found a chariot, but what does this mean for our understanding of the time just before the eruption? Well it actually gives us a pretty good amount of information.

So because the chariot is made of iron, with medallions and decorations made of bronze. It doesn’t take a specialist in archaeology to figure out that this chariot was something pretty special.

Archaeologists actually believe that this particular chariot would have been used for only special occasions, like festivals or parades. Big ticket items. You wouldn’t have seen someone wandering down to the corner store in this kind of chariot.

Here’s Eric Poehler, an archaeologist who specialises in Pompeii traffic, to tell us just how fancy this chariot was:

I was astounded. Many of the vehicles I’d written about before … are your standard station wagon or vehicle for taking the kids to soccer. This is a Lamborghini. This is an outright fancy, fancy car.

This exceptional discovery only confirms the theory that those residing at Civita Giuliana were extremely wealthy, and the implications about the extreme state of preservation and what knowledge that can impart to us about the ancient Roman world, can still be telling in the months and years to come.

Even though the most attention grabbing find of this excavation was the chariot, work has also been done to verify just how far those illegal tunnels had gone, unfortunately confirming damage upon the cultural heritage of the area. Apparently from the very start, the whole exercise had been an operational challenge, because the tunnels, while running through ancient roman soil, also run under modern houses, that had been built on top of the buried remains of houses, streets and buildings.

Here’s Dario Franceschini again, giving us an insight into how this discovery has thwarted those looters:

A round of applause and thanks to the Archaeological Park of Pompeii … for the collaboration which has verted the theft and illegal sale of these extraordinary finds on the black market.

The chariot is being called a Pilentum, here’s Massimo Osanna to tell us what this means:

What we have is the ceremonial chariot, probably the Pilentum referred to by some sources, which was employed not for everyday use or for agricultural transport, but to accompany community festivities, parades and processions … considering that the ancient sources allude to the use of the Pilentum by priestesses and ladies, one cannot exclude the possibility that this could have been a chariot used for rituals relating to marriage, for leading the bride to her new household.

So a very fancy chariot indeed, and despite the chariot having, as Nunzio Fragliasso says:

Miraculously escaped the looting of grave robbers despite being literally touched by the tunnels dug by the perpetrators at a depth of over 5 metres.

We are still left with a chariot that is entirely unique, not just in the Pompeii region and Italy, but throughout the world. The individual decorations, I’m sure, tell a story that we are yet to uncover, and the fact that the chariot would not have been used for everyday activities, we can begin to understand the different aspects of Roman life. Of which many more will come to light in the decades and centuries that follow ours, as Pompeii, Herculaneum and all those other cities, towns and villas that were buried by Vesuvius start to make themselves known.

Due to copyright issues, we are unable to provide images of the chariot that has been found at Civita Giuliana.
You can view images of the find by clicking on the video links below or by viewing the references used for this episode.

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