Orpheus and the Dog

Mosaic of the Guard Dog.
Pompeii, House of Orpheus VI, 14, 20
From British Museum website

My first idea was to choose the object and the related building to model and unify according to the results of my preliminary interviews. However, being the BM exhibition forthcoming, I could not ask the visitors (or potential visitors) which ones were the most relevant artefacts on display.

I have decided to start from the items highlight on the museum website and, among them, I have focused on the “Mosaic of a Guard Dog” from the House of Vesonius Primus (also known as The House of Orpheus).

My choice was based on the following criteria:

- I have a better knowledge of the Pompeian cityscape than the Herculaneum one. Having a limited time to complete my project, I thought it was more sensible and effective to maximise my previous experiences,

- I wanted to take hard measurements of the chosen building and it was easier for me to receive a permission for Pompeii,

- The artefacts that will be displayed are not yet in the British Museum. It was unlikely to receive special permission from the other Museums to acquire data about the items exhibited in glass cabinets, so I decided to focus on the flat ones that are easy to photograph and document even without special permissions.

- The image of the black dog is one of the most famous and it has been reproduced in  many books, guides and memorabilia.

The characteristics of the Mosaic of the Dog and the House of Orpheus made them the most sensible choice. Furthermore, an other very iconic Pompeian object that will be part of the BM exhibition such as the plaster cast of the agonising dog comes from the same House. Even though it wasn’t possible for me to acquire data about the cast of the unlucky animal, its story can be easily connected to the virtual model.

However, I am not forgetting user’s needs and expectations. I have started conducting unstructured interviews with visitors:

of the sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum

of the National Museum of Naples

of the Virtual Museum of Herculaneum (MAV)

in order to gather the first information about what different audiences think of the ancient remains and what kind of experience, real and virtual, they expect during the visit.

From Pompeii to the Trobriands

The baker Terentius Neo and his Wife
From wikipedia commons

As soon as it was available on the British Museums website, I have downloaded and read the press release about the exhibition to find out something more about the concepts underlying it.

According to what I have read, key features appear to be domestic spaces and ordinary lives of the people in Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Apparently, this exhibition is going exactly in the direction I hoped for my project: material culture or, in other words, that fascinating intersection between archaeology and anthropology.

What is material culture about?

It is a bit like Digital Humanities, nobody exactly knows. I like to think that material culture is the study of what we leave behind us when we (as single persons or societies) pass away. I am aware that cultures are not only material and a lot of our heritage is not-physical or, better, non tangible. I am also aware that, as Malinowski remarks, a material object is meaningless without its immaterial context. But this is exactly the point. 
In his famous Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922:105), Malinowski says:

"A canoe is an item of material culture, and as such it can be described, photographed and even bodily transported into a museum. But [...] the ethnographic reality of the canoe would not be brought much nearer to a student at home, even by placing a perfect specimen right before him.

The canoe is made for a certain use, and with a definite purpose; it is a means to an end [...]. In the study of the economic purposes for which a canoe is made, of the various uses to which it is submitted, we find the first approach to a deeper ethnographic treatment. Further sociological data, referring to its ownership, accounts of who sails in it, and how it is done; information regarding the ceremonies and customs of its construction, a sort of typical life history of a native craft all that brings us nearer still to the understanding of what his canoe truly means to the native. 

Even this, however, does not touch the most vital reality of a native canoe. For a craft, whether of bark or wood, iron or steel, lives in the life of its sailors, and it is more to a sailor than a mere bit of shaped matter. To the native, not less than to the white seaman, a craft is surrounded by an atmosphere of romance, built up of tradition and of personal experience. It is an object of cult and admiration, a living thing, possessing its own individuality."

Trobriand Islands. A traditional canoe.
From Art Pacific

How many things of a dead person or culture can we understand looking at its objects?

I have worked once on the book collection of a famous Italian director. After that experience, I felt, irrationally, that I knew him deeply. It was one of the most vivid experience about how powerful objects can be.

In an archaeological context, how many things can we understand looking at an ancient artefact? Why the maker chose a specific material or a particular shape, why one section looks more consumed than the others, why it was stored in a certain place and where was it found?

What I have learnt is that we often don’t have univocal answers to all these questions. Nevertheless, artefacts (big or small, monumental or ordinary, precious or cheap) are kind of “instruction books” (to quote Rapoport not literally) to understand past cultures. Or at least try to.

The British Museum seems to explore this kind of approach quite successfully. I was reading today, on their blog, the “life-story” of the Amara pot.

Going back to Malinowski, how much do we lose when we look at the object separated from its context? I think this is one of the better potential applications of 3D visualisation, digital and virtual technologies. I believe that all the audiences would understand a lot more about, for example, the portrait of Terentius Neo and his wife (or the Amara Pot) if they could not only see the object exhibited in the museum but also, somehow, access a visualisation of it put in its context: that “domestic space” lived by “ordinary people” that is supposed to be one of the strongest concept of the whole exhibition. 

Nice to meet you

My name is Valeria Vitale, I have just finished an MA in Digital Humanities at King’s College London. My background is in multimedia and public engagement and I used to work in Italy for major theatres and museums.  During my MA I started working with 3D visualisation and I became convinced that it can be an extraordinary means to communicate and promote cultural heritage.

I am particularly interested in the use of 3D technologies to build a visual and  cognitive bridge between the archeological site and the related artefacts displayed in museums that are often located in different cities (or even nations). I also think that digital learning environments can be very effective in reinforcing the emotional connection between visitors and ancient objects.

Thanks to the V-Must program, I am back to King’s College for a 3 months internship with King’s Visualisation Lab, under the supervision of Drew Baker and Martin Blazeby. My case study is the British Museum’s forthcoming exhibition “Life and Death. Pompeii and Herculaneum”. Have you heard about it? If you didn’t, have a look at the website.

I am writing this blog to keep records of all the steps of my work, from the readings to the documentation of the 3D model according to the London Charter guidelines.

If you have questions, suggestions or comments feel free to post a comment.