{"id":9,"date":"2017-03-08T03:20:36","date_gmt":"2017-03-08T03:20:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/?page_id=9"},"modified":"2017-05-04T18:09:57","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T18:09:57","slug":"20th-century","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/20th-century\/","title":{"rendered":"1950 – 1980"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Preservation & Documentation<\/h1>\n
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\"Jashemski\"
Stanley, Jashsemki, Wilhemina Jashemski uncovering a fresco in room 61 at Oplontis, Date Unkown<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Though the technological advancement of photography, the medium became a household item, accessible to anybody. This freedom of the medium allowed for archeologists to document sites more easily as they changed over time. In the Bay of Naples, this can best be seen at the Villa at Oplontis located near Pompeii. Excavations at the site had been ongoing since the late sixteenth century during the construction of a canal, but due to the geological situation, it was more difficult to uncover the Villa compared Pompeii’s light pumice cover. It was not until 1964 that the Italian Government decided to excavate the site extensively.\u00a0During this time, Wilhemina Jashemski, an American from Nebraska, undertook research on the gardens at Oplontis.<\/p>\n

A professor of Ancient Studies at the University of Maryland, Jashemski was instrumental\u00a0in pioneering the study of ancient horticulture by using plaster casts similar to those used by Fiorelli at Pompeii, filling the cavities left by trees and plants. She engaged paleobotanists to study the plant materials including pollen and seed-flotation to uncover the kinds of plant species grown at the Villa in 79AD.1<\/a><\/sup> Her\u00a0involvement at Oplontis\u00a0Villa A began in June\u00a01964, when Carlo Giordano invited the Jashemski’s to\u00a0see the remains of Oplontis\u00a0at Torre Annunziata, under excavation by the Superintendency for Naples and Caserta.\u00a0Between 1964 and 1971, Jashemski excavated the gardens of Pompeii,\u00a0Boscoreale, and Oplontis.\u00a0<\/b>Her husband, Stanley, a noted physicist, collaborated with her, and additionally documented the excavations with extensive photography, ultimately\u00a0producing more than 30,000 photographs, until his death in 1982.2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

\"Excavation
Excavation of atrium 5, vestibule 4, and viridarium 20, August 1966. View from the southeast. Photo: SAP De Franciscis 9.392.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During the excavations, Photography was the single most important form\u00a0of documentation for the Jashemskis’ work at Pompeii. Stanley was integral in documenting Wilhelmina’s discoveries, as well as everything else occurring at the Villa, even when he was not supposed to be. He used mainly Kodachrome film to document the archeology. Kodachrome is a slide film invented in 1936 that allows one to project the image\u00a0from either slide through a projector. The price of the film was lowered in the 1950s allowing the new medium to be more cost efficient for consumers. The couple started to\u00a0use Kodachrome as early as 1955 to document ancient gardens and continued to use the film into the 1980s. Because of the film’s chemical makeup, even after seventy years locked away in storage, Stanley’s Kodachrome slides have remained intact and vivid. Jashemski\u00a0additionally used\u00a0black and white print film but his use of color was a huge leap in technology that offered archaeologists the\u00a0advantage of seeing frescoes in their full array of colors.3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

\"Stanley<\/a>
Stanley Jaskemski, 1960. Oplontis Gardens. Plaster casts being created for the root cavities.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In addition to the use of Kodachrome, Wilhemina Jashemski used aerial photography via a balloon in order to\u00a0capture the layout of the Villa in relations to its gardens and vineyards. The photographs allowed for Jashemski to see the locations of root cavities and contours from a birds-eye-view. This technique was first used in 1973 and again in 1977\u00a0in collaboration with\u00a0Julian and Eunice Whittlesey, of the Robin Lee Whittlesey Foundation, who\u00a0used both\u00a0a Hasselblad camera and 8-meter kite balloon to capture\u00a0both\u00a0black-and-white and color images. 4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

\"Oplontis,
Oplontis, atrium 5, east wall. Photo the Wilhelmina Jashemski Archive, 1968_45_24. \u00a9 The University of Maryland<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stanley’s photographs documented more than just Wilhemina’s excavations or root cast cavities. He shot\u00a0everyone and everything including the crew, the bulldozers, and the frescoes emerging\u00a0from the hardened volcanic mud. Because of this, it is now\u00a0possibly to reconstruct the\u00a0procedure of the excavations in 1966 through Stanley’s photographs. They\u00a0have allowed archeologists documentation of what frescoes looked like when they were first discovered. Some have since faded away due to exposure and these photographs act as the only record\u00a0of the lost works. For example, the fresco\u00a0in the tympanum above the north alcove of cubiculum 11 was photographed by Stanley shortly after its discovery around 1966. The fresco has since faded away but modern technology has allowed for the\u00a0recreation of the fresco using Stanley’s photographs. 5<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

<\/a>
Cubiculum 11, north alcove, tympanum. 1967.Photo: Stanley Jashemski<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\"Tympanum<\/a>
Cubiculum 11, north alcove, tympanum painting, 2009. Photo: P. Bardagjy.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\u2190 Previous\u00a0<\/a><\/h2>\n
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  1. \u00a0\u201cThe Oplontis Project<\/em>.\u201d The Oplontis Project. 2012. Accessed March 21, 2017.\u00a0http:\/\/www.oplontisproject.org\/<\/a>. ↵<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  2. \u00a0McKee, Jim . “Wilhelmina Jashemski is a Nebraska author you’ve never heard of.” JournalStar.com. June 13, 2010. Accessed March 22, 2017. http:\/\/journalstar.com\/news\/local\/education\/jim-mckee-wilhelmina-jashemski-is-a-nebraska-author-you-ve\/article_407280f6-75b1-11df-a990-001cc4c002e0.html. ↵<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Clarke, John R., and Nayla K. Muntasser. Eds.\u00a0Oplontis: Villa A (\u201cOf Poppaea\u201d) at Torre Annunziata, Volume 1. The Ancient Setting and Modern Rediscovery.<\/em>\u00a0New York: ALCS E-Book, 2014.\u00a0http:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/cgi\/t\/text\/text-idx?c=acls;idno=heb90048.0001.001<\/a>. ↵<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Ibid. ↵<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n
  5. Ibid. ↵<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Preservation & Documentation Though the technological advancement of photography, the medium became a household item, accessible to anybody. This freedom of the medium allowed for…<\/p>\n

    Continue Reading1950 – 1980<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":672,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/672"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":380,"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/9\/revisions\/380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.mtholyoke.edu\/arth310brown\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}