I’ve joked before that I gravitated towards economic and social history because I have a terrible memory for dates. That’s not entirely true – it’s rather the case that I think that, most of the time, longer-term structural factors are more important than short-term l’histoire événementielle in shaping human life, and of course that applies to politics as well – but I *do* have a terrible memory for dates, and hence tend to get defensive on the subject, given that a lot of people assume that history is basically about dates so this must be what I do.
Given this proclivity, you might expect my reaction to this week’s news story about a Pompeian graffito that potentially changes our view of the date of the eruption of Vesuvius would be basically negative: whoop-di-doo, as I once remarked of the fuss over the discovery of Richard III’s bones. Not at all! That is to say, if new evidence claimed to show that the eruption happened in 78 or 82 rather than 79 I’d be largely indifferent, but a shift from August to October – or rather, to be precise, a further bit of evidence to support the existing case for preferring an autumn date; this isn’t quite as radical or as decisive as media reports inevitably make it seem – is really quite exciting.
How does a shift of a couple of months change our understanding of the destruction of Pompeii? It doesn’t in the slightest – and some of the negative comments about the story might be explained by an assumption that discoveries in Pompeii should be telling us about Pompeii. Rather, as Kristina Killgrove’s article sets out very nicely (and see also her Twitter feed at @DrKillgrove, especially the thread here), this is significant for what evidence from Pompeii can tell us about other aspects of Roman life – which in my view is much more important than things which are unique to a single city.
The reason is that the sorts of ‘structures of everyday life’ that I’m interested in – agriculture, diet, health and disease, climate – are not static and unchanging. They don’t change much from year to year in their broad parameters – it makes perfect sense to talk about ‘Roman agriculture’ or ‘Roman demography’ as things that endure in more or less the same form over decades and centuries, and not just because we lack the evidence for a more nuanced account – but within the year they vary enormously, partly predictably (seasonal variation) and partly not. Even today, in our cosseted modern economy, summer brings strawberries that actually taste of something and winter brings a higher incidence of flu; in pre-industrial societies, these seasonal variations were much more noticeable and significant.
In other words, we would not expect the diet or the health or the demographic profile of the Pompeian population to vary much on average from year to year, and so, as far as using Pompeian evidence for these things is concerned, it’s a matter of total indifference whether the eruption that produced and preserved this evidence was in 78 or 79 or 82.* But the potential differences in diet, health etc between August and October are considerable, and would have a real impact on how we interpret the evidence – as Dr Killgrove discusses, the conclusions that can be drawn from the bodies of those who died in Pompeii will be different if we think this is a sample of an autumn population rather than a summer one.
And that’s why this media story is rather different from the norm. Typically, a find is presented in the most dramatic terms possible, linked to famous individuals and dramatic events: Boudicca’s rebellion, Alexander’s tomb, Caesar’s toothbrush etc. If any question is raised, it’s “can we be sure?” – the significance of a find relating to a famous individual is taken for granted (and this is very annoying). In this case, however, the questions are both “can we be sure?” and “so what?” – which creates the opportunity for explaining why this matters. Of course the news story is over-simplified and over-dramatised – that’s what they do – but it’s much closer to a genuinely useful ‘teaching moment’ than usual, and much closer to significant cutting-edge research on antiquity than just a re-hash of old-fashioned emperors, battles and nice artefacts history. Go Team October!
* Well, maybe not total indifference; it would be good to correlate the data with detailed evidence for climate conditions that year…
Update 18/10: one of the helpful things about the WordPress platform is that I can see figures not only for page views and visitor numbers but also other stuff, and so I know that while this post has been viewed over 400 times, only FIVE people have clicked on the link to Kristina Killgrove’s article over at Forbes. Okay, some of these people may have read that article before coming to this blog, but I find it hard to believe that almost everyone has. And I’m especially concerned about those who of you who are visiting here because Mary Beard mentioned it in her TLS blog this morning; PLEASE go and read Dr Killgrove’s piece.
Why is this important? Firstly, because it’s one of the things that make blogs great: the power of the hyperlink, the ease of following up interesting ideas and finding more information, especially when you’re reading a fairly throwaway personal reflection and it offers you a link to the serious discussions. Secondly, because it’s about giving due credit: I wrote this in response to the Killgrove article and her discussions on the Twitter, and it is not only embarrassing for me to feel that I’m being given credit for her ideas, but also a really problematic bit of academic erasure – middle-aged male academic being credited with ideas of younger female colleague is not a good look, even if I didn’t hepeat in the conventional manner. So, here’s that link again, just to make it easier:
And the key thread on the Twitter, unrolled:
Sphinx 
Leave a Reply