Resurrecting Pompeii (10 page)

Human skeletal remains found in archaeological contexts have not always been treated with respect and their potential as a source of evidence was not appreciated by early excavators. Skeletons were routinely discarded from numerous archaeological sites right into the twentieth century. Human finds from both Pompeii and Egypt were unique for a number of reasons. The survival of the forms of bodies in Pompeii and the actual soft tissue in Egypt, coupled with the remarkable preservation of their contexts and the impressive array of associated artefacts, gave these sites unrivalled appeal. The initial treatment of human finds both in Pompeii and Egypt was similar. Skeletons and mummies were used as props for vignettes or re-excavations that were produced for the edification of visitors. Human finds from both Pompeii and Egyptian tomb sites inspired popular literature and film.

A fortuitous series of circumstances in Egypt produced an environment that was conducive to scientific research. This resulted in mummy research providing a benchmark for all investigation of ancient human remains, especially in the field of palaeopathology. Numerous mummies have been subjected to analysis with no reference to the huge body of popular culture based on mummy finds. In contrast, there was no associated culture of science in Pompeii and it was, therefore, more likely that popular culture would have a greater impact. Pompeian research on human remains not only lagged behind that of Egypt but was also palpably influenced by one particular work of fiction,
The Last Days of Pompeii
. So the key difference between the study and interpretation of human remains from Pompeii and Egypt up to the final decades of the twentieth century is that in Pompeii skeletal investigation remained bound with popular culture, whilst in Egypt popular culture and scientific research had a parallel existence with no apparent overlap.

The middle of the nineteenth century was marked by a discernible shift in attitude to the human skeletal remains that had been exhumed from Pompeii. Instead of merely functioning as props for either literary or physical reconstructions, this material was now recognized as having value as a scientific resource. The first scholarly examination of the Pompeian human skeletal material was published a little over a hundred years after the first official excavation of the site.

The impetus for the initial investigations was the establishment of the Commission for the Reform of the Royal Bourbon Museum and the Excavations of Antiquities of the Kingdom in 1848. This commission was set up by Ferdinand II under political pressure, as there were serious problems with the management of archaeological sites in the region around Pompeii. Raphaele d’Ambra reported to the Commission later in that year that bones and other finds had been neglected and remained in deposits without any attempt to ensure their preservation. Further, permission had been denied to a French chemist, Jean Pierre Joseph d’Arcet, to conduct research on the human remains. The Commission made 11 proposals to facilitate the reopening and subsequent protection of the archaeological area of Pompeii. One of these proposals was to open a gallery of Pompeian skeletons, which would involve the donation of skulls and other skeletal material to the Royal University of Studies in Naples. This was the first real acknowledgement that the human skeletal remains were of anthropological significance. Unfortunately, the liberal political climate was altered by the restoration of the monarchy, which meant that the proposals of the Commission were never put into practice.
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Stefano Delle Chiaie revived interest in the issues associated with storage and research on the Pompeian skeletons in 1853. He was responsible for the establishment of a sizable collection of skeletal material in the Anatomical Museum of the Royal University of Naples and undertook the first study of the bones that were available.

The first major publication of the human skeletal remains from Pompeii that included raw data and systematically presented results appeared in 1882. It involved the research of Giustiniano Nicolucci, the founder of the Institute of Anthropology of the University of Naples.
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Nicolucci summarized and reviewed the studies on the human bones from Pompeii that preceded his work.
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His literature review is revealing as Nicolucci was very much a man of his era. To him craniology, and more specifically craniometry, was paramount in anthropological studies and works that were not devoted to measurement and discussion of skull form were not considered important. He was fairly dismissive of the 1854 publication of Delle Chiaie. This was partly because its main focus was on a description of the pathological changes that he observed. It also contained two analyses of the chemical composition of Pompeian bones, which were undertaken by Lehman for comparison with the chemical composition of modern bones. Nicolucci was apparently not interested in the pathology and lamented that craniology scarcely received a mention in this work, there merely being a short note stating that some skulls were globular, others ovoid and that a few were oblong in form. The final type of skull observed in this work was interpreted as African, probably representing slaves who were in the service of the wealthy citizens of Pompeii.
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Nicolucci was very critical of this work and stated that he thought that this brief description did not shed much light on ‘the natural history of Pompeian man’, especially since it did not include measurements. He stated that all Delle Chiaie’s work revealed was that there was no uniform skull shape in the sample and that one could divide the skulls into specific types. Nicolucci, however, did not appear to be convinced that enough evidence was produced to establish these assertions, especially with regard to the so-called oblong or African crania.
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Delle Chiaie’s publication certainly tends towards being data-free, which does limit its scientific value.

Nicolucci also expressed reservations about the Pompeian skull that was illustrated in the work of Sandifort as it also had not been measured and there had been no attempt to compare it to other crania. Conversely, he considered that the publication of another Pompeian skull by Vrolik and Van der Hoeven provided an accurate description. This skull had been affected by osteo-sclerosis and displayed extreme brachycephaly, with a cephalic index of 87.3. These two scholars interpreted this skull as Greek in form, based on the work of the nineteenth-century Swedish anatomist Retzius, who defined and popularized the cranial or cephalic index. This is the ratio of maximum width to maximum length of the cranium and it was applied in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries as an indicator of ‘race’. Skulls that were described as long-headed, or dolicocephalic, had an index of no more than 75, whilst those that were more short headed were classified as brachycephalic and had an index of, at least, 80. Retzius classified the Greeks to be among the brachycephalic populations in Europe. Nicolucci, as a typical nineteenth-century anthropologist, accepted the cephalic index as a reliable criterion for ‘race’ determination. However, he chose to disagree with the famous Swedish anthropologist’s pronouncements as Retzius did not examine the skeletal remains of ancient Greeks. Retzius only used modern skulls, whereas Nicolucci found from his experience that the skulls of ancient Greeks were generally dolicocephalic. While Nicolucci considered that the judgement of the nationality of the Pompeian skull by Vrolik and Van der Hoeven was not exactly correct, he stated that he was certain that it did not represent one of the Pompeian types. He considered that its excessive brachycephalism was also partially due to pathological change.
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Presuhn published an article on Pompeian anthropology in 1881. This work was based on a minimal number of skulls. All that was stated was that they were big and robust with a strong and protuberant occiput, the facial angle was open, the face was full and the nose large. He considered that the stature of the Pompeians was medium, like other South Italians, and the hair was generally brown or almost black.
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Though it was apparent that Nicolucci was unimpressed with the fact that Presuhn formulated his description of the ancient Pompeians from virtually no skeletal evidence, he did not comment on the reconstruction of features that cannot be determined from the skeletal record, like hair colour. At best, such attributions could only have been based on extrapolation from ancient paintings or observations of the modern population. There was a long tradition for such reconstructions, which extended well into the twentieth century. Angel, in his work on skeletal material from Attica, for example, demonstrated a remarkable ability to detect not only hair but also eye colour from skulls. This can be seen in his description of people he classified as Nordic-Iranian from their skulls as ‘probably … tawny haired, blue-or-green eyed blondes as well as brunettes’.
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Such an approach negates the value of any study since the conclusions are drawn prior to commencement from preconceived ‘types’, presumably recognizable in modern populations.
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It is possible that Nicolucci ’s preference for things cranial explains why he neglected to mention the examination of a single right femur by Amabile, which was found to have an untreated compound fracture that had healed at right angles.
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Despite his obvious bias, Nicolucci presented a critical summary of the first studies of the Pompeian skeletal collection. It is apparent that he perceived the need for a more systematic study based on a large sample as compared to the essentially antiquarian approach of his predecessors.

Nicolucci ’s work provides a very good case study of nineteenth-century physical anthropology. It deserves detailed consideration as it was the major publication on the Pompeian skeletons in the nineteenth century and continued to be considered the seminal work on this material until this type of craniometric approach was challenged in the latter part of the twentieth century.

The skeletal remains that Nicolucci used for his study were either displayed in cabinets or stored in special rooms in the anatomical museums in the University of Naples. Nicolucci did not state whether these collections comprised complete skeletons or merely crania but it is notable that he considered that the main purpose of this material was to provide information about the cranial form, and, therefore, enable scholars to determine the exact ‘type’ of the Pompeian skulls. These could in turn be compared with ancient Italian crania from known populations to establish the relationship of the Pompeian victims with the other ancient populations in the region. Nicolucci also considered that this work would be of value in the determination of the cranial and physiognomic variability of ancient and contemporary Campanian people. He stated that this aspect of the study could be guided by observations from Pompeian wall paintings.
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Nicolucci described the history and ethnology of Pompeii to provide a context for his craniological study. His ethnological description was based on the ancient literary sources, like Strabo and Pliny the Elder (Chapter 4). He did not use the skeletal record to test the literary sources.
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Their accounts were accepted as fact. This approach to written evidence in relation to physical evidence has been typical until comparatively recent times. Nicolucci also subscribed to the notion that the old, the very young, the infirm and women made up the majority of the victims, even though it was unencumbered by evidence.
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Nicolucci studied a sample of 100 skulls, 55 of which he determined to be male and 45 female. He considered that the entire range of ages was represented in his sample, with the majority being between the ages of 60 and 90 (Chapters 6 and 7).

Nicolucci only commented on the presence of three non-metric traits associated with the skulls he examined. These were metopism, wormian bones and inca bones (Chapter 9). It is significant that Nicolucci related these findings to cephalic index and cranial capacity, which were considered to be the most important population indicators in the nineteenth century. From his conclusions from the data on metopism, it was obvious that he considered that non-metric traits also provided a contribution as population descriptors. Nonetheless, his presentation of the cases of wormian and inca bones in the sample was more antiquarian in nature, where incidence was apparently noted for curiosity value and no conclusions or comparisons were drawn, though it is possible that comparative data were available at that time.
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Nicolucci stated that his classi fication of Pompeian skulls was based on the work of Linnaeus. In the mid-eighteenth century, Carl Linnaeus constructed the first formal classification scheme of different human groups as part of his greater taxonomy of living organisms. He identified four separate types: Europaeus albus (European white), Asiaticus luridus (Asiatic yellow), Americanus rufus (American red) and Africanus niger (African black). This work, like others of its period, incorporated perceived cultural characteristics with the physical traits.

Nicolucci emphasized the importance of the cephalic index in relation to the other metric data he collected by discussing it in a separate section. He determined that 14 per cent of the sample he studied was dolicocephalic, 43 per cent mesocephalic and 43 per cent brachycephalic, with a mean index of 77.7, which is in the mesocephalic, or moderate-headed, range. He noted that there were differences in the proportions of this index between the males and females in the sample, with males having a relatively higher incidence of dolicocephaly, whilst the females tended to be more mesocephalic and brachycephalic. The mean cephalic index for the female sample was 78.1 whilst that for the males was 77.3. He concluded that the variation he observed in the cranial index in this sample did not reflect, as some scholars before him had suggested, foreign forms. He considered that all the Pompeian skulls conformed to a common type, which he called the ‘Pompeian’ or ‘osco-campano’ type. This information, in conjunction with the rest of the large set of metric data that Nicolucci collected, was used to describe the features of the ‘Pompeian’ type.
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From his cranial analysis, Nicolucci considered that he was able to identify a Pompeian ‘type’. This ‘type’ was considered to be specifically Southern Italian and was comparable to other regional ‘types’, like the Oscan or Samnitic ‘type’. It presented under the various cranial forms, dolicocephalic, mesocephalic and brachycephalic, though, in general, mesocephaly was found to be predominant, followed by brachycephaly and then dolicocephaly. Nicolucci considered that brachycephaly was more frequently found in the female than in the male cranial series, whilst there was a higher incidence of dolicocephaly in the male series. The mean cranial capacity for males was calculated at 1500 cc for the males and 1323 cc for the females. The majority of the males were found to have a cranial capacity higher than the overall mean of 1412 cc, whilst most of the females were observed to have a cranial capacity below this figure. The forehead was not found to be very broad and apparently was less than that observed on Roman crania. The breadth of the anterior part of the skull was said to be a distinguishing feature of Roman skulls. The top of the frontal bone was observed to generally take a more or less ogival or pointed arch form, a characteristic that was considered to be a regional constant through time.

The form of the face was described as more or less oval, with cheekbones that only projected minimally. The jaw of the Pompeian type was considered to be rather large, heavy and high, the net result of which was a lengthened chin. The nose was characterized as high, large and narrow, or leptorrhine, with a nasal index of less than 48. The orbits were observed to be rounded and slightly slanted at the external edge. They were of moderate aperture. The orbits were found to be proportionately larger in the female sample.
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It is worth noting that though Nicolucci claimed that the population was mostly mesocephalic, there actually were equal numbers of brachycephalic and mesocephalic skulls in his sample. The sample mean was mesocephalic. Perhaps the reason for Nicolucci’s tendency to present the population as more mesocephalic than the evidence actually suggested was that he had a preconceived idea of the features of the people from this region. The socalled Mediterranean ‘race’ that was first fully described by Ripley in 1899 supposedly included the people who occupied the area around Pompeii. This ‘race’ was characterized as relatively ‘longheaded’. Kroeber noted that despite the fact that this would mean dolicocephaly, most European ‘racial’ groups described as ‘longheaded’ were, in fact, mesocephalic. It is likely that these notions about regional differences predated Ripley, which may explain Nicolucci’s attempts to massage the data.
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Nicolucci claimed that the wall paintings that had been revealed during the excavations in Pompeii provided an additional source of information about Pompeian anthropology and physiognomy. He stated that the different indigenous types were well illustrated in these paintings. He argued that even though most of the paintings showed depictions of Greek mythological scenes, local models were used. He presented examples from the Italian Renaissance to demonstrate his point. He considered that Raphael’s Madonna was an example of Umbrian beauty and that Titian’s voluptuous Venus was a reproduction of the form of a typical Venetian woman. He further claimed that the indigenous Pompeian type could still be observed in the modern populations in the region around Pompeii. He included a plate of lithographs in his monograph, which he described as ‘faithful reproductions’ of faces from Pompeian wall paintings. He used these to illustrate the faces of the local Pompeian types, which, not surprisingly, were noted as mostly mesocephalic (Figure 3.1).
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