April 2011 – Page 3 – The History Blog

Main street of Herculaneum reopened

April 20, 2011

The Decumanus Maximus, the main street bisecting the ancient Roman city of Herculaneum, has been closed to the general public for over 20 years while it received much-needed maintenance. Now Herculaneum’s largest thoroughfare has finally been reopened so visitors can enjoy a stroll down its impressively preserved length.

“Most of Herculaneum as experienced by tourists consists of little narrow streets where people could virtually lean across from balcony to balcony and touch hands,” [archaeologist Andrew] Wallace-Hadrill said. “But the Decumanus Maximus is a big public space. It’s impressive.”

Herculaneum is west of Vesuvius, on the other side of the volcano from its more famous cousin, Pompeii. It was a smaller, wealthier town and it appears that most of its residents were able to evacuate before the pyroclastic surges from the August 24th eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. buried the city in what would eventually cool down into 50 to 60 feet of volcanic tuff rock. The thick coating would seal the town airtight and allow for the incredibly rare survival of organic materials like wood and food.

That massive cap of rock would also make treasure-hunting and destructive early excavation more of a challenge, so even after it was rediscovered by workers digging a well in 1709, most of it remained unexposed to the elements. The part that was excavated, however, was in atrocious condition as recently as 2001. Most of it was closed to tourism due to safety reasons. Much like the problems Pompeii is facing today, Herculaneum was in need of constant restoration and maintenance, much of it not the glamorous kind of work that gets the kind of funding it needs.

In 2001 the Herculaneum Conservation Project (HCP) stepped up to the plate. Funded by David W. Packard, president of the Packard Humanities Institute, the HCP works with the State Superintendence for Archaeological Heritage of Naples and Pompeii with help from the British School at Rome to do all the grunt work necessary to keep the ancient site in stable condition.

The project has consolidated the escarpment that towers over the town, stabilised all but a handful of the ancient buildings, repaired most of the existing roofing and reinstated the original Roman drainage system, providing an outlet for water that once accumulated on the site and threatened to destroy it.

The contrast with developments at Pompeii, where part of a 2,000 year-old house fell down last year, could scarcely be starker.

According to project director Wallace-Hadrill, the focus on regular, unglamorous maintenance, cooperation with the state ministry and implementing “low-cost, sustainable, practical solutions” has not only been extremely effective at stabilizing the site, but has also revealed splashy finds like a richly decorated ceiling, all the Roman craftsmanship still intact.

Owner of Hackney Double Eagles claims the hoard

April 19, 2011

Modern(ish), Treasures

Last fall, Dr. Andrew Scott Reid, the coroner for Inner North London, opened a treasure inquest over the hoard of 80 gold American $20 coins known as Double Eagles found buried in a Hackney backyard. Since the find was less than 300 years old, the coroner gave any potential owners until this spring to come forward, in which case the coins would be returned to them. If no valid ownership claims appeared, then the find would become property of the Crown and the finders would get paid fair market value by whichever museum wanted to keep the hoard.

Because of the publicity given to the find when the inquest was opened and the coins went on display at the British Museum, a member of the public pointed the coroner’s office to an article in The Times dated March 13, 1952 which described a very similar find of American gold Double Eagles at the same property in Hackney. The coroner declared that those coins were not treasure because the owner was known, a Mr. Martin Sulzbacher, who had lived on that property over a decade earlier. As was the law at the time, Mr. Sulzbacher did not get his coins back, but he was reimbursed for their value.

Thanks to that huge tip, the coroner’s office, the British Museum and the Museum of London were able to do further research and discovered the amazing story behind these beautiful gold coins.

Martin Sulzbacher was a German Jew who fled Nazi persecution and emigrated to London in 1938. He sold all his belongings to get the hell out of Germany, but was able to smuggle out his collection of Double Eagles. He put them in a bank vault where they would be safe. By 1940 he owned and was living in the Hackney property with his wife and four children, his brother, two sisters and their parents.

When war broke out, Sulzbacher was interned as an enemy alien refugee. His wife and children were sent to the Women’s Internment Camp in the Isle of Man, while he was sent to Canada on the “Arandora Star” which was torpedoed on the way and sank. He was fished out of the water hours later only to be sent to an internment prison in Australia. A year later, at the end of 1941, he was sent to the Isle of Man where he joined his family and eventually they were all released.

Meanwhile, back in Hackney, Sulzbacher’s brother became concerned that the gold coins would not be safe where they were because there was a genuine possibility that Germany might invade England and raid bank vaults as they had in Amsterdam. He removed the coins and buried them in the back yard. He told a friend and neighbor that he had done that, and the neighbor suggested he tell him where exactly the coins were buried in case something happened. The brother pointed out that there were five family members living in the house who knew where to find the coins once the coast was clear, so he really didn’t feel it was necessary to share the location with the neighbor.

Then, on September 24th, 1940, the house took a direct hit from a German bomber during the Blitz and everyone inside was killed. When Martin Sulzbacher returned to London, he went to the bank and found to his horror that the coins were all gone. The neighbor then told him about his brother’s having buried the coins and Martin dug up the entire yard looking for them, but to no avail. It wasn’t until 1952 that a construction crew found part of the treasure and Sulzbacher was able to reclaim some of his lost buried coins.

Martin Sulzbacher went on to run a bookshop in Golders Green and died in 1981. His son Max, one of the four children who was interned on the Isle of Man, is still living as are his siblings. He is 81 now, a retired accountant who moved from England to Jerusalem three years ago, and as of yesterday, he is the official owner of 80 gold Double Eagles dating from between 1854 and 1913, because according to the terms of the 1996 Treasure Act, gold and silver objects younger than 300 years old do not belong to the Crown if the owner or his heirs are known. This is actually the first time since 1996 that a legitimate owner has made a successful claim to an item that would otherwise have been classified as Treasure and thus property of the Crown.

The estimated value of the coins is £80,000 ($150,000). Max will give one of them to the Hackney Museum for a permanent display and he will give a reward to the finders. The rest of the hoard he will sell at auction. The proceeds of the sale will be used to restore the graves of his family members who were killed in the Hackney house during the Blitz and buried in a cemetery in Enfield. He says the tombstones were poor quality to begin with due to wartime austerity, and they’ve all but crumbled over the decades. Now the surviving children will have the means to pay for new headstones and restore the plots of their grandparents, uncle and two aunts.

Lost ashes of psychology pioneer Adler to return to Austria

April 18, 2011

Modern(ish)

Alfred Adler, one of the founders of the psychoanalytic movement along with Sigmund Freud, had a heart attack in 1937 while he was in Scotland giving a series of lectures at the University of Aberdeen and died. His family asked that he be cremated and the Warriston Crematorium in Edinburgh did the honors. (The only cremation facilities in the country back then were in Edinburgh and Glasgow, so he couldn’t be cremated in Aberdeen.)

The funeral was held in Aberdeen first, and although the family were in attendance along with the university’s finest, they lost track of the body when the casket was sent south for cremation. When nobody picked them up, the ashes remained in Warriston’s wood-panelled gallery, unnoticed and unremarked, until 2007.

In 2007, the Society for Individual Psychology, the institute founded by Adler in his native Vienna in 1912 after his split with Freud, asked the honorary Austrian consul to Scotland, John Clifford, to try to find Adler’s ashes. He started the search in Aberdeen, where he found there were no local crematoria. He moved on to Edinburgh searching the records of Seafield Crematorium to no avail, then moving on to Warriston. There he found Alfred Adler listed in the records and one of the staff brought him right to the ashes.

So there was really no mix up or loss of the urn. It’s just that nobody in his family, scholars, colleagues or anybody but the Warriston people knew where the ashes were being kept.

Now arrangements have finally been made for an official hand-over of the ashes. Tomorrow, April 19th, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, George Grubb, with Mr. Clifford and members of the Society for Individual Psychology in attendance, will give Alfred Adler’s ashes to the Austrian ambassador. The ashes will then be re-interred in a grave of honor at the Central Cemetery of Vienna.

Adler was born in Vienna in 1870. He and Sigmund Freud co-founded the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1911. However, their association did not last. Freud called Adler’s idea too contrary and presented all member of the VPS with an ultimatum: drop Adler or be expelled from the society. Adler took his ball and founded the Society for Free Psychoanalysis, renamed in 1913 the Society for Individual Psychology.

There Adler would develop his most famous concept, the inferiority complex, and would advocate a co-operative, democratic approach to child-rearing and the importance of the equality of the sexes, very much unlike Freud. He thought feelings of superiority and inferiority often displayed themselves in gendered terms, and compensating for these feelings then led to psychological and sociological problems. Also unlike Freud, Adler believed psychological theories could be utilized pragmatically by anyone who was interested, not just by professionals behind the desk.

Stolen Goya, El Greco paintings found after 14 years

April 17, 2011

Modern(ish), Renaissance, Treasures

Officers with the Spanish Civil Guard have recovered two paintings, “La Anunciación” by El Greco and “La Aparición de la Virgen del Pilar” by Francisco de Goya, which were stolen 14 years ago.

They were found in a villa in the Alicante region after a tip-off to police last autumn that the paintings were about to be sold. The investigation had gone cold by this point, but police were still looking and since they had alerted the Art Loss Register and Interpol when the paintings were first stolen, the thieves had found it difficult to sell such highly identifiable masterpieces. The information in the tip proved to be accurate and the police were able to track down the paintings in the private home and arrest the homeowners, who it seems were already known to the police.

Both paintings appear to be entirely undamaged, which is a relief because as counter-intuitive as it seems, oftentimes thieves have no idea how to properly care for their big score, especially when they end up having to keep the pieces for years and decades longer than they expected.

Painted by two masters of Spanish art — although El Greco was actually from Crete, hence the name — both works are considered important parts of Spain’s cultural heritage. “The Annunciation” was painted by Doménikus Theotokópoulos, aka El Greco, in 1570 during his Venetian period (he would move to Toledo in 1577 and be welcomed as a great artist). Aragonese painter Francisco Goya created “The Apparition of the Virgin of Pilar” between 1775 and 1780. It was commissioned to decorate the altar of the church of San Pedro in Urrea de Gaén, Teruel.

They belonged to wealthy collector Julio Muñoz Ramonet, known to have made his fortune as a smuggler during the Franco years, who regularly lent them to museums for special exhibits. It was during an international tour that the paintings disappeared.

Ramonet died in 1991, and he left both the paintings to the city of Barcelona in his will, along with the rest of the contents of his two Barcelona mansions. The only conditions Ramonet placed on the legacy were that the city would provide for the proper preservation and maintenance of his art works and antique furniture. To ensure compliance with this condition, the city established the Julio Muñoz Ramonet foundation in 1995.

His heirs disputed the will, however, and have appealed a recent ruling in favor of the city, so right now the question of who actually owns these paintings is up in the air.

That belongs in a museum!

April 16, 2011

Multimedia, Museums

In a confluence of movie magic, archaeological research and technological innovation that has been way too long in coming, Lucasfilm, the Penn Museum and the National Geographic Society have created a new travelling exhibit that showcases both the fictional wonderland of Indiana Jones and the factual reality of how archaeology is practiced.

Since the first thing they tell you in any archaeology class is “DON’T DO THIS IF YOU WANT TO BE LIKE INDIANA JONES,” and yet, Indiana Jones has ignited a passion for archaeology in the breast of many a young dreamer, it seems only fair that a museum exhibit be put together that offers both the irresistible allure of the great adventurer and corrects the many misconceptions about archaeology (not to mention actual crimes like theft and destruction of ancient sites) that Indy’s adventures have promoted.

Enter Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology. It puts on display a huge collection of props, models and art from the Lucasfilm Indiana Jones archives, along with the real deal: ancient artifacts from the Penn Museum and National Geographic Society archives. All visitors will receive handheld multimedia guides, an interactive tool that will allow visitors to customize their experience according to their interests. There’s also a quest game element that will give children both in age and at heart the chance to explore the exhibit as if they were Indiana Joneses themselves.

The exhibit is divided into four sections. The first, Quest for Treasure, displays some of the shiny things Indiana Jones has discovered at risk to life and limb, like the Chachapoyan Fertility Idol who is not deceived by any bags of sand you might try to put in his place, next to the shiny things real archaeologists have discovered with trowels and little tiny brushes, like an embossed gold plaque from Panama dating to 500-900 A.D. (courtesy the Penn Museum).

The guide explains how the film’s designers used different archaeological inspirations to create the Headpiece of the Staff of Ra, and while making it very clear that there is no genuine artifact that combines Phoenician script, a menorah-looking thing, and Ra’s falcon symbol, it points out the similarity between the Headpiece’s ultimate look and a pair of elaborate earrings found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb. Archaeologist Michel Fortin then explains that to archaeologists, “treasure” doesn’t mean precious metals and gemstones, but is instead defined by the historical significance of a piece, how much information it can give us about the past.

The next section, Dig into the Past, explores the importance of context for an object. Since Indy plays more than a little fast and loose with archaeological context (he’s basically a looter), this part focuses on his understanding of the history of the pieces he’s looking for, and Michel Fortin explains that importance of placing an artifact in its proper archaeological context. You learn something very different from a piece that you find in a home versus one you find in a temple, for example. The Lucasfilm collection in this section includes the Sankara stones, while the genuine archaeological artifacts come from Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, and Tepe Hissar, among other places.

The third section is called Investigate, and it covers how Indy and real archaeologists put together many small clues to come to an understanding of a discovery. Protip: X never, ever marks the spot. (Unless it does.) Fortin explains that the bulk of investigation work doesn’t happen following trails to the Holy Grail, but rather once researchers bring artifacts they’ve found on an archaeological site back to the lab. There chemical analysis fills in blanks — dates, materials, etc. — and other elements, like inscriptions and designs, are explored in detail, translated, interpreted.

In the last section, Solve the Mystery, Indiana unravels the mystery of the crystal skull and archaeologists explain that the very definition of their discipline is to discover facts about our past by interpreting the material remains the ancients have left behind. Through artifacts archaeologists explain the unexplained.

The exhibit opens at the Montreal Science Centre on April 28th and continues there through September 18, 2011. More sites will be added to the schedule soon. Keep an eye on this page to find out when it will be coming somewhere near you.

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