The Villa of Crossed Destinies

Gladiator Fight during a Meal at Pompeii, 1880, Francesco Netti
from Getty Museum website

We used the space syntax analysis software to investigate accessibility and visibility of space. We also tested from which points of the villa it was easy to see the mosaic and what areas of the villa were visible standing on the mosaic. But I’ll publish some screen shots and notes on that in another post.

I stared at the plan and went through my photographic documentation, trying to image that House, in the past. The little beautiful mosaic on the threshold of the fine room. Why? Why the mosaic was there and not in any other place of the villa? What was its purpose? The truth is that we don’t know.

But is that really a problem for the audience?

Many professionals in museum and site management seem to believe that visitors couldn’t cope with uncertainty. Maybe they feel it would undermine the authority of the museum or cultural institution. I don’t think so.

Let me use an example to make this point clearer. In her popular book about Pompeii, Mary Beard complains about a famous Pompeian “fact” that I have actually found in more than one touristic guide. The anecdote is that the body of a very wealthy woman, wearing fine cloths and expensive jewellery was found in the Gladiators barracks, close to the body of a handsome fighter. It is easy to join the dots and put together a steamy story about luxurious ladies visiting their secret lovers: fearless men who faced death everyday but, apparently, were also very keen on enjoying life. The catastrophe of the Vesusius caught them in the middle of a passionate meeting. To me, it sounds like something between a Hollywood peplum and a Barbara Cartland novel. However, the story per se is quite effective and often makes the tourists smile.

Unfortunately, the story in not true. Or, at least, not complete. None of the books citing (or just repeating) the  story says that, in the same barracks, other 18 bodies have been found. This information changes the scenario completely. Assuming that they were not a club of voyeurs, it is more likely that, during the scary and confusing events of that day, people of different social status sought shelter in the same place. We could even add that she was wearing so many jewels not to impress her lover but because, as many other inhabitants of Pompeii, she was trying to flee carrying on her body at least her most valuable goods.

But this is just another hypothesis. Perhaps more grounded than the other one. What is certain is that we don’t know.

The Castle of Crossed Destiny,
Cover of the first edition

I believe that the possibility to imagine one (or more) hypothetical story, starting from the historical and archaeological information available, can be seen as an interesting task and not a limitation by the audience. As a visitor, I wouldn’t like to listen to a ready made story that is presented as “a fact” while not only it is just an interpretation but is also based on a (non declared) selection of the available information.

According to many scholars in Museums Studies and Public Archaeology (such as Witcomb, Parry and Copeland), the best way to engage the audience is to involve them in the production of meaning. Of course members of the public are not archaeologists or classicists. But if they knew what was found in an ancient place, let’s say a house or a cubiculum in the barracks, they could apply what Merriman  calls ‘informed imagination’. They can’t develop scientific interpretation. But, for sure, they can imagine stories starting from the pieces of information they have received.

That’s what I wanted to do with the dog mosaic.

When I was trying to explain my idea to my supervisor, I told him something like: “Imagine each bit of information we have about the House of Orpheus is a card. You have multiple combinations available, you have multiple potential stories.” While I was speaking, I visualised the pages of a book by one of my favourite Italian writers, Italo Calvino. The book is called The castle of Crossed Destinies and it’s part a collection of short stories, part a mind blowing essay on semiotics. A group of travellers are gathered together but, for a mysterious reason, they cannot talk. The only means they have to communicate (and entertain each other) is using a deck of Tarots to build their stories visually. 

One of the interesting aspects is that each card is used more than one time and with different connotations.

Let’s go back to the House of Orpheus.

If we consider, for example: 

the small mosaic with the dog, 

the fact that the dog does not look like a guard dog but more like a pet, 

the fact that room 9 is exquisitely decorated, 

the fact that Vesonius Primus had his garden decorated with a large fresco with Orpheus and the animals, 

the fact that he received an herm from his workers as a sign of gratitude 

we could say that Vesonius was a gentle hearted person who treated his workers and slaves fairly. He also loved poetry and nature (like Orpheus), especially animals. So much so, that he was very fond of his dog and dedicated an entire room of his house to it. When he left the House to save his life, a major cause prevented him from freeing the dog, who met a sad end. 

The Castle of Crossed Destinies

Or we start from the fact that Vesonius received a herm from his workers and change completely its connotation, connecting it differently to the other bits of information we have.

We could think that Vesonius was a mean and tyrannic master. Not only he made almost impossible for his slaves to buy their freedom but also obliged them to spend a lot of money in a “spontaneous” gift of gratitude. The dedication of the herm should be read, in this case, as slightly ironic in spite of its respectful words. Perhaps Vesonius loved his dog more than his human workers (it wouldn’t be that strange for an ancient Roman) and the dog was indeed very much hated in the house as he received better care, food and shelter than many people there.

Maybe when Vesonius left the house he put one of his slave in charge of protecting it from thieves but the slave, understood the situation, escaped leaving the dog at guard of the house. With not a lot of regrets.

Combinations are almost endless. There isn’t one that is more correct than another. Probably none of them would be “what actually happened”. But that is not the point. I believe that trying to build a story is an effective way to invite the public to gather as much information as they can, to put things in context, to empathise with the people that used to live in ancient cities, to understand better what studying the past means.

By the way, we started feeling sorry for the poor dog that dies at the end of each of these stories. So we gave him a name: is called Morty :-)

"To say" and "to do": why objects in museums are not self explanatory

If we focus on everyday-life items, archaeological museums have many issues in common with ethnographic museums. This is why I am reading a book written by a great Italian anthropologist, Alberto Mario Cirese, who I was lucky enough to have as a teacher some years ago.

The classification, interpretation and display of objects in ethnographic museums was one of its main research interests and I found papers and books such as Oggetti Segni Musei (Objects Signs Museums) still incredibly relevant to the present scholarly debate.

Cirese complains about the practice of exhibiting everyday-life items on walls or in glass cabinets with little or no information about their use. Curators are biased because they already know how the objects were employed, so they assume this information is easily accessible to the audience and it is somehow embedded in the objects themselves. 

Not only experience tells us that this is not true, but, according to Cirese, logic suggests it as well.

Aesthetic objects, as statues or paintings, have a strong communicative value. They are objects meant “to say”, to make themselves comprehensible (through logic or emotion) to the viewers. This is why they tend to work quite well in museums or even in churches or streets.

But everyday-life objects such as looms, pots, tools, machinery they are not meant “to say” something but “to do” something, to work instead of communicate. Thus they lack the visual information necessary to be understood at first glance. Nonetheless, when they are exhibited in ethnographic (or archaeological) museums they are supposed “to say about how they work” as they have suddenly became self explanatory only because they have been moved to a museum context.

Obviously, there are many intermediate positions between this opposition (my language skills make it very difficult to render in English such an effective terminology as the one used by Cirese who opposed «segnico» to «fabrile»). For example, as Cirese reminds, there are objects that have both a practical and a communicative function such as ex voto. 

Ethnographic Museum in Formentera
from formenteraweb

However, in an archeological context where so many information about use are lost, even these kind of objects need to be contextualised to be understood (figurative votive offers to ancient divinities might be not as understandable as the ones closer to the scholar’s own cultural background). It also worths to mention what Leroy Gourhan called «aesthetic functionality*»: the attempt of good craftsmen to achieve best practice combining pleasantness and functionality, use and decoration.

Cirese claims that the only way to make objects understandable to an a non expert audience (ie an audience that has no idea about the original use of the objects themselves) is to recreate, as much as possible, their context of use. In case of tools, he believes it would be mandatory to show the object IN USE, to communicate its very relevance. 

The task is not easy, especially with those objects whose context is not fixed (a house, a shop) but intangible (or «volatile» as Cirese would have preferred to say) such as rites, games, celebrations.

According to Cirese, a realistic reconstruction (with mannequins, for example) wouldn’t have been effective because the attempt to reproduce reality is doom to fail and it is bound to be disappointing if not ridiculous. On the contrary, a synthetic representation that is explicitly not realistic but identifies and isolates only those characteristics of reality that are relevant to the exhibition purposes, could successfully deliver contextual information.

It really saddens me that Professor Cirese is no longer with us and I would be really happy to ask him if, in his opinion, non-realistic 3D digital visualisation could serve this purpose and even suggest new opportunities. 

I genuinely think so.

 (*my translation from Italian)

Isis does it better

Archaeological Museum of Naples
Temple of Isis Collection. Photo by V. Vitale 2012

It is not possible to write about the Pompeian artefacts exhibited in the Museum of Naples without mentioning what is, in my opinion, the museum’s best achievement: the Temple of Isis’ Collection. 

Unlike the other more old fashioned areas of the museum, this little sub-complex has been re arranged in order to deliver a richer and more engaging information. It looks as if they were trying to meet the same audience’s needs expressed by the visitors I have interviewed. Unfortunately, the collection is closed for refurbishment but, thanks to the museum's direction's kindness, I had the privilege to visit it one year ago to gather documentation for my dissertation on the Temple of Isis.

Here follows a few notes about the collection, in comparison with the other Pompeian collections of the Museum.

Language: all the labels and the information are available in Italian and English, making the praiseworthy communication effort enjoyable by a larger audience.

Archaeological Museum of Naples
Temple of Isis Collection. Photo by V. Vitale 2012

Richer descriptions: the labels are less laconic and there are few panels telling at least basic information about the temple and the use of its different spaces (the porticus, the sacrarium the ekklesiaterion etc...). 

Contextual information: the exhibition is rich in contextual information. The first room displays a plastic of the iseum, where the user can see the frescoes’ fragments put in place and have an idea of the architectonical structure of the temple. In the same room are also exhibited ancient documentation from the excavations (1760s) such as Francesco Piranesi’s drawings and the engravings commissioned by the king before the removing of of the frescoes.

Almost every artefact is accompanied by a short text about its use, provenance and sometimes even about its finding location during the excavations.

In one of the room dedicated to the artefacts from the porticus area, a 2D visualisation helps the visitor placing each fragment on the original pattern, communicating the idea that, even though the fragments are framed and hanged on walls like paintings, they were not autonomous but part of a whole pattern. 

Relationships between artefacts: I believe this is the only Pompeian collection in the museum that gathers different kind of artefacts (frescoes, statues, ritual objects, inscriptions not immediately linkable to each other) and shows their connection, presenting them as elements of the same context: the temple is communicated as a «entity», a decorated public and sacred space. 

As always, there is room for improvement. For example, the plastic lacks in transparency, as it is implicitly presented as a reconstruction of the “real thing”, without mentioning the scholarly process or the component of speculation behind it and without mentioning that there are more than one possible, and plausible,  visualisations.

Archaeological Museum of Naples
Temple of Isis Collection: scale model
 Photo by V. Vitale 2012

Archaeological Museum of Naples
Temple of Isis Collection: informative panel
 Photo by V. Vitale 2012

 Moreover, the panels that are supposed to help visitors to locate the fragments on the original walls are, in my opinion, a bit too schematic for a non expert audience and, they make up only partially for the actual disposition of the fragments on the museum walls. In fact, even though frescoes coming from the same area of the iseum are grouped together, they are displayed on the walls disregarding both their vertical (top/down) and horizontal (left/centre/right) original position, creating a slightly confusing match.

I am remarking that because I believe that digital products could help an archaeological museum to improve the quality and quantity of delivered information. Nonetheless, the Isis collection is an interesting attempt to renovate the museum’s approach. It is probably not realistic to rearrange a whole museum (situated in an historical building) in such a way but the Isis collection can be seen as an example, able to give to the public an idea of the relationships between the artefacts, between the artefacts and their interpretations, between the artefacts and the building, between both of them and the ancient inhabitants of Pompeii.

I look forward to the news that such an interesting area of the museum is available again to the public. 

Museum of Naples: complaints department #2

Mueum of Naples, Mosaics Collection
From the Museum's website

There is one last complaint that does not come from the people I interviewed but from my personal experience and was highlight by my current research.

No information about the relationship between objects: sometimes different objects come from the same house, but the visitor is not able to see the connection. In some cases the objects are physically dispersed, like the mosaic of the guard dog from the House of Orpheus (exhibited in the Museum of Naples) and the plaster cast of the dog (from the same house but exhibited in the Antiquarium of Boscoreale), but even when they are in the same museum the relationship is not explicit for the visitor.

On the contrary, sometimes it seems that misleading connections are accidentally suggested by the use of exhibition's space. As Parry remarks, space in museum is part of the communicative process. Proximity implies meaningful connections between items. 

For example, I went to the Archaeological Museum of Taranto (MARTA) yesterday and I couldn’t initially understand the display's criteria. Then a guide explained that the different objects exhibited together came from the same burial. The curators had also added ancient statuettes or paintings illustrating how the found ear rings, buttons or fibulae used to be wore. Having received that information everything made much more sense to me.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to work out what are the display criteria in the Museum of Naples. For example, floor mosaics are exhibited next to wall mosaics (as fountains or nymphea’s decorations). To be honest, sometimes the criterion seemed to be simply chromatic similarity or aesthetic pleasantness.

Actually, the Museum's website says that the mosaics are exhibited according to the building materials and techniques. However, this information is not accessible during the visit of the museum.

It is not my intention to criticise the museum’s management because I understand that is very easy to judge and much more difficult to deal with such a complex situation. However, I can’t help thinking of how much of the potential of one of the most interesting museum in the world is partly wasted. 

Furthermore, if the site of Pompeii can still live on its fame, aura and unique history, I believe that the Museum should definitely invest in the quality of the information it is able to deliver.

Museum of Naples: complaints department #1

G. Sommer, Ancient Vases in the
Archaeological Museum of Naples
from wikipedia

So far, I have written notes about Pompeii and the absence of the artefacts on site. What about the ancient objects found in the ancient city? Are the visitors of the Archaeological Museum in Naples more satisfied than the site’s ones?

Apparently they are not. 

Even though all the visitors I have spoken with recognised that the Museum shows interesting items, they were all disappointed (to different extents) by their visit.

The followings are the most common complaints

Language: almost everything is written in Italian. If the visitors don’t want to pay for an audioguide, there is no means to access even the most basic information in a language other than Italian. Considering that the Museum is visited by a very international audience this is very difficult to accept.

Brief and generic descriptions: even Italian visitors were disappointed by the information delivered in the museum, not because of the language but because they found it not sufficient and too generic. The labels are scarce and sometimes just made of two or three words (for instance: “vase, Pompeii”).

No information about use: it is difficulty to understand how everyday-life items were used. Not only surgical tools but even kitchen supplies remain somehow mysterious. The visitors can observe the objects but, because it is impossible to imagine their function or their context of use, the audience tends to loose interest in them.

In my opinion, this is really a shame as everyday-life items can be seen as the highest value offered by the archaeological site of Pompeii. In fact, if it is more likely that exceptional items survive because they are valuable and people take care of them, everyday-life objects often disappear completely. Moreover, Pompeii is one of the best places to analyse those objects in a richer context.

G. Brogi, Surgical tools in the Archaeological Museum
of Naples. From the Alinari Collection

The ones listed above were the impressions that my volunteers spontaneously communicated to me. Then I asked them few specific questions focusing on the topics more closely related to my present research. For example, I tried to understand how easy was for the public to establish a connection (both cognitive and visual) between the artefacts and the provenance building. There was a general agreement on this subject and here follows a sum up of what they told me [plus my comments in square brackets].

Little or no information about provenance: the provenance of the objects is not always stated. Often the labels just say “Pompeii” or “Herculaneum”. In some cases the provenance of the artefact is identified with the code of regionis and insulae set by Giuseppe Fiorelli. 

[I believe this choice is already disappointing for visitors who know a little bit of the toponomastic of Pompeii but I find it quite unsuitable for general public. Fiorelli’s code is precise and clever and it is very useful in archaeological excavations, records and studies. However, I don’t think it was meant for communicative purposes. Moreover, considering how peculiar and evocative are the names of many of the houses in Pompeii, using them might allow more people to connect the items with the place they come from.]

Little or no information about the context: not only it is often very difficult to establish a relationship between the object and the building, but also between the object and its context. 

[Mosaics for example, are usually exhibited on walls and there is no mention that they used to be floors’ decoration. Contextual information is almost completely missing. Speaking of mosaics, that are one of my specific target, there is very few information about how they were built, why they where used to decorate spaces, in what kind of houses and rooms they have been found etc... I believe this kind of information would definitely make the object more interesting in the visitor’s eye]