ABSTRACT
This chapter contains translated excerpts from contemporary excavation day-books. Pompeianarum Antiquitatum Historia (PAH: History of Pompeian Antiquities) is a three-volume work (1860-1864) which published transcriptions of the manuscript notes kept by the excavators from 1748 onwards ( J1-58). It was compiled by Giuseppe Fiorelli while he was a political prisoner in 1849. He is better known for his introduction of a more scientific approach to digging at Pompeii after he had become inspector of the excavations in 1860. His system of numbering every building with three numbers – region, insula and doorway – remains the foundation of how buildings at Pompeii are still identified today. This supplemented the previous custom of giving names to houses, some of which would accumulate more than a dozen names over the years, and which could result in confusion (see note on J55-58). One of the most memorable features of visits to the site today is seeing plaster casts of Vesuvius’ victims, a technique which Fiorelli adopted extensively.
