8.8 208 Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries, reconstruction
8.9 208 Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries, statue of Livia as found
8.10 210 Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries: wine-press, reconstructed
8.11 214 Pompeii, thermopolium or bar
8.12 214 Pompeii, bronze bust of Caecilius Jucundus
8.13 214 Pompeii, House of D. Octavius Quartio, garden, reconstruction
8.14 217 Pompeii, House of D. Octavius Quartio, garden, with trellis
8.15 221 Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries, fresco: woman being scourged
9.1 225 Rome, Forum of Peace, reconstruction from Forma Urbis
9.2 227 Rome, Forum Transitorium, Colonnacce before excavation
9.3 227 Rome, Forum Transitorium, Colonnacce after excavation
9.4 228 Rome, Imperial Fora, model
9.5 234 Rome, Coliseum, beast elevator, plan
9.6 234 Rome, Coliseum, beast elevator, elevation
9.7 234 Rome, Coliseum and environs, model
9.8 237 Rome, Arch of Titus
9.9 238 Vatican City, Cancelleria reliefs
9.10 239 Vatican City, Cancelleria relief, head of Vespasian
9.11 239 Vatican City, Cancelleria relief, Domitian transformed into Nerva
9.12 244–5 Rome, Palatine: Palace of Domitian, plan
9.13 245 Rome, Palatine: Palace of Domitian, reconstruction
9.14 248 Rome, Piazza Navona, air view
9.15 249 Rome, Stadium of Domitian, plan
9.16 249 Rome, Stadium of Domitian, model
10.1 254 Ostia, plan
10.2 255 Ostia, air view
10.3 259 Ostia, Casa dei Dipinti, reconstruction
10.4 261 Ostia, harbors, plan
10.5 261 Ostia, harbors, air view
10.6 261 Ostia, harbor of Trajan, model
10.7 264 Ostia, Mithraeum of Felicissimus, plan
10.8 268 Rome, Trajan’s Market
10.9 272 Rome, Trajan’s Column, detail
11.1 275 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, Serapeum at Canopus, “pumpkin” vaults
11.2 276 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, plan
11.3 276 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, model
11.4 278 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, Teatro Marittimo, air view
11.5 282 Rome, Temple of Venus and Rome, model
11.6 282 Rome, Temple of Venus and Rome, plan
11.7 284 Rome, Temple of Venus and Rome, apse with scale figure
11.8 284 Antinous
11.9 285 Rome, Pantheon
11.10 287 Rome, Pantheon, plan
11.11 287 Rome, Pantheon, interior, restoration
11.12 290 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, Piazza d’Oro, plan
11.13 293 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, Piazza d’Oro, reconstruction
11.14 293 Rome, Hadrian’s Mausoleum, reconstruction
11.15 293 Tivoli, Hadrian’s Villa, Canopus, plan
12.1 300 Roman road construction
12.2 306 Roman roads of the ager Faliscus
12.3 307 Faliscan roads of the ager Faliscus
12.4 311 Rome, Baths of Caracalla, air view
12.5 311 Rome, Baths of Caracalla, great hall, reconstruction
12.6 315 New York, Pennsylvania Station, McKim plan
12.7 315 New York, Pennsylvania Station, waiting room, before “modernization”
12.8 316 Rome and environs, map showing aqueducts
12.9 318 Aqueducts near Capannelle, reconstruction (painting)
12.10 322 Rome, Aurelian’s Wall, from south
12.11 323 Rome, Aurelian’s Wall, plan, with major Imperial monuments
13.1 328 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, “Bikini girls” mosaic
13.2 330–1 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, reconstruction
13.3 334 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, Circus Maximus, mosaic
13.4 334 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, small hunting scene, mosaic
13.5 338 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, large hunting scene, mosaic
13.6 338 Piazza Armerina, Imperial Villa, Labors of Hercules mosaic, detail
13.7 343 Vatican City, excavations under St. Peter’s, west end, plan
13.8 343 Vatican City, excavations under St. Peter’s, Mausoleum F, stuccoes
13.9 346 Vatican City, excavations under St. Peter’s, Campo P, plan
13.10 348 Vatican City, excavations under St. Peter’s, Aedicula, reconstruction
1
Prehistoric Italy
In May of 1945 two young British Army officers, John Bradford and Peter Williams-Hunt, based with the R.A.F. at Foggia in the province of Puglia, near the heel of Italy, found that the World War II armistice left them with time on their hands. Both trained archaeologists, they readily prevailed upon the R.A.F. to combine routine training flights with pushing back the frontiers of science. The result of their air reconnaissance was to change profoundly the archaeological map of Italy.
The value of air-photography for archaeology had long been known; as early as 1909 pictures taken from a balloon had revealed the plan of Ostia, the port of ancient Rome. But the English, especially such pioneers as Major G. W. G. Allen and O. G. S. Crawford, early took the lead in interpreting, on photographs taken usually for military purposes, vegetation-marks showing the presence and plan of ancient sites buried beneath the soil, and invisible to the groundling’s eye. Where the subsoil has been disturbed in antiquity by the digging of a ditch, the increased depth of soil will produce more luxuriant crops or weeds; where soil-depth is decreased by the presence of ancient foundations, walls, floors, or roads, the crop will be thin, stunted, lighter in color. Air-photographs taken in raking light, just after sunrise or just before sunset in a dry season, especially over grassland, will highlight these buried landscapes. The Tavoliere, the great prairie where Foggia lies, thirty by fifty-five miles in extent, suits these conditions admirably; its mean annual rainfall is only 18.6 inches (0.6 in July) or half that of Rome, and Rome is a dry place, at least in summer. So Bradford and Williams-Hunt had high hopes for their project.
In a Fairchild high-wing monoplane, in which the position of struts and nacelles does not interfere with the operation of a hand-held camera, they took oblique shots at 1,000 feet with an air camera of 8-inch focal length. For vertical shots they used, at 10,000 feet, air cameras of 20-inch focal length, mounted tandem to produce overlap for stereoscopic examination, which makes pictures three-dimensional. The thousands of resulting photographs were at a scale of about 1:6000, or ten inches to the mile, over four times as large as the best available ground maps (the 1:25,000 series of the Italian Istituto Geografico Militare.)
Bradford, realizing the archaeological value of the millions of air-photographs taken during the war by the British and American Strategic Air Commands, prevailed upon the authorities to deposit prints, giving complete coverage for Italy, in Rome (with the British and Swedish Schools) and the American Academy. The initiative of Prof. Kirk H. Stone procured a similar set for the University of Wisconsin. The stereoscopic study of these collections will mean great strides in Italian archaeology. The accuracy of the data obtained is amazing: ditches estimated from the photographs with a good micrometer scale to be four feet wide proved when measured on the ground to be precisely that.
What the photographs revealed, scattered over the 1650 square miles of the Tavoliere, were over 2000 settlements, some up to 800 yards across, surrounded by one to eight ditches. Within the ditched area, and approached by in-turned, tunnel-shaped entrances, were smaller, circular patches, which looked like hut-enclosures, or “compounds.” Three examples of the sites photographed will illustrate typical settlements. At a site identified on the map (Fig. 1.1) as San Fuoco d’Angelone, eight miles northeast of Foggia, the photographs showed a ditch-enclosed oval measuring 500 × 400 feet, and an inner circle 260 feet across, with what proved to be the characteristic funnel-shaped opening. At Masseria Fongo, four miles south of Foggia, the oval was estimated at 480 yards long, with a 12-foot entrance and 12-foot ditches. At Passo di Corvo (Fig. 1.2), eight miles northeast of Foggia, the enclosure measured 800 × 500 yards, and the details were revealed by masses of flowers, yellow wild cabbage, mauve wild mint, white cow-parsley.
So much for results from the study of photographs. The next step for Bradford was to spend a fruitful season in the study. Archaeology is a comparative science: to know one site is to know nothing; to know a thousand is to see some factors unifying all. Thus the settlement-shapes of the Tavoliere are reminiscent of the fortified stronghold of Dimini in Thessaly (Fig. 1.3), dated by its excavation in the late neolithic age, which in Greece means about 2650 B.C. They also look like the fortified site of Altheim near Munich (Fig. 1.4), also late neolithic, which in Germany means about 1900 B.C. Culture in Europe moved from east to west; in general the farther west the site, the later it reached its successive levels of culture. The Tavoliere sites, lying geographically between Dimini and Altheim, might well be intermediate in date also; by their shape, at any rate, they are almost certainly to be dated sometime in the neolithic period. So much can be guessed before the indispensable next step is taken. The next step is excavation.