A history of shopping in Pompeii
My research priority at the start of 2019 is to finish a book, the first volume of Bloomsbury’s Cultural History of Shopping focused on the period of antiquity. There are books on retailing already, but to our surprise – there is no book totally focused on shopping in antiquity. The great thing about the Cultural Histories series is that the chapters and contents of the chapter are set for all periods across six volumes by the series editor. Hence, this forces us as Ancient Historians to engage with the preoccupations of historians of other periods of history, and to step out of our comfort zone.
The entire project of creating this book with our authors has caused us to shift our perspectives and really engage with a human activity that has been ignored by scholars in the discipline.
There have been interesting reactions from colleagues, when I’ve told them I am working on shopping from stunned silence and bewilderment to ‘how cool is that!’. I think this illustrates how Ancient History is riven with a deep conservatism to shut itself away from addressing major human activities, whilst at the same time authors are able to meet the challenge of developing a key area of research – after all the streets of the cities of the Roman Empire were lined with shops.
Not to develop a history of shopping would simply be negligent and reinforce the perception of the irrelevance of the discipline of Ancient History based in the Humanities. The entire project of creating this book with our authors has caused us to shift our perspectives and really engage with a human activity that has been ignored by scholars in the discipline.
Another project I have well underway and due to be written up as an article for publication in Japan is an investigation of risk in the Roman city. I’d never really thought about risk, although fires, floods, disasters are stock themes of the study of living conditions in ancient Rome. To push the subject forward my colleague, Professor Yoshiki Hori (Kyushu University), held conferences in Kyoto and Tokyo sponsored by a Japanese security company.
Rome had to not only face down the prospect of fires, but also provide its million or so inhabitants with a sense of security from fire. This involved the development of a militarized fire brigade and ultimately to the use of brick faced concrete to build structures that could to a degree resist fire – we can see these today at Ostia Antica.
I am really delighted another project is in final write-up based in Pompeii. In 2017, we were investigating the geo-chemistry of the paving stones of Pompeii and the famous crossing stones using a Hand-Held Portable Xray Flouresence (HHPXRF) system.
The data that we collected was showing a few anomalies. Lead, as we had found elsewhere, was a pollutant from traffic and vehicles, but we also had an anomalous reading for zinc. I should mention that Pompeii lies in the most heavily polluted river valley in Europe, but as it turned out the potential source of zinc pollution probably comes from the 2.5 million visitors to Pompeii and is deposited by their trainers; alongside the other major source: trucks used in the conservation of the site. Thus, for the first time, we can identify how tourism and conservation changes the very fabric of the archaeological record – the stones that paved the streets of the city.
Follow Ray on Twitter @raylaurence1
Comments