Summary of the impact

Wallace-Hadrill designed, and directed (since 2001 and) throughout the period 2008-2013, the Herculaneum Conservation Project, with the aim of developing better conservation strategies for the site, improving understanding by new archaeological discoveries and raising international awareness through public advocacy. His research, embodied in Herculaneum: Past and Future (2011), has made an international impact, informing public debate on the future of the site, attracting extensive media attention (including a television documentary), and influencing the organisation of an exhibition at the British Museum. The project has brought — and continues to bring — substantial funding to the site, and is at the heart of current plans for the site's development.

Underpinning research

The research underpinning the impact was conducted by and under the leadership of Professor Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Master of Sidney Sussex College (2009-2013), Director of Research, Faculty of Classics (from 2012). The research has been ongoing and cumulative, but was brought together most fully — and to greatest effect — in A. Wallace-Hadrill, Herculaneum: Past and Future (2011, and subsequent translations into Italian and German).

Herculaneum: Past and Future consolidated and advanced current research to offer a strikingly new overview of the urban history and development of the town of Herculaneum and integrated this with an analysis of the fabric of Roman urban society. By undertaking a fundamental reassessment of the received interpretations of the ancient city of Herculaneum (largely based on the excavations of the middle decades of the twentieth century), and drawing on the results of new discoveries made in the course of the Herculaneum Conservation Project under Wallace-Hadrill's direction, this research offers a new understanding of Herculaneum as a Roman community — its public spaces and its private structures, residential and commercial.

Herculaneum: Past and Future has also drawn attention to the severe neglect of the site, in terms both of the failure of the heritage authorities to maintain and conserve it, and the failure of archaeological research to exploit it, or of archaeologists to bring it to proper public awareness. This formed the basis of Wallace-Hadrill's argument for the importance of the site as a uniquely well-preserved case study of Roman society, and hence the urgency of steps to preserve it. Deliberately addressing a wider public, the monograph sought to raise the profile of the site and stimulate public interest, and to make the case for the pressing need to focus on the conservation problems. In the extensive recent debate in the media about the condition of Pompeii and international concern manifested in the intervention of UNESCO, Herculaneum has repeatedly been held up as a model of good practice. Wallace-Hadrill and his team have contributed to that debate, and have been invited to advise the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Napoli e Pompei, and the Ministero dei Beni Culturali. It is a central argument of Herculaneum that advocacy of such sites is fundamental to their management and conservation, securely underpinned by the scientific and academic research that Wallace-Hadrill and his team have carried out.

References to the research

Details of the impact

This research has led to impact — in many forms and media — on:

1) the documentary, The Other Pompeii: Life and Death in Herculaneum, that focused on Herculaneum, commissioned for BBC2: transmitted 1 April 2013, repeated 2 April, 17 June, 1 August and 17 September; consolidated viewing figures of 2.71 million, average audience rating 88/100 (Section 5.1). Wallace-Hadrill was both historical consultant and presenter. The programme was dependent on the results of his project and the arguments of his book. Reviews and blog comments were positive: for example, `Professor Wallace-Hadrill presents with such passion and enthusiasm for the subject he has devoted his life to that it is hard not to be engaged' (5.2).

2) the conception of the British Museum's exhibition `Pompeii and Herculaneum: Life and Death' (March -September 2013), specifically in the inclusion of Herculaneum in the title; in the well-received case of objects recovered from the Herculaneum sewer, in multiple references in the exhibition catalogue (5.3), and in the series of four lectures and events in the British Museum curated by Wallace-Hadrill in parallel with the exhibition (3, 24 and 31 May and 12 July). Wallace-Hadrill also took part in both live transmissions of the BM show, Pompeii Live and Pompeii Live for Schools to cinemas in the UK on 18 and 19 June, and shown to audiences in over 500 cinemas in the USA and Canada on 25 September. `Everyone has been full of praise for your enthralling presentation to Peter in the evening broadcast and your equally brilliant performance with the children on their "dig"' — Deputy Director, British Museum (5.4).

3) secondary education in the New South Wales Board of Studies Stage 6 Syllabus, Core Study, The Cities of Vesuvius, The Herculaneum Conservation Project is regularly studied by over 10,000 young Australians (5.5).

4) the approaches of the Italian heritage authorities, both at the local level of the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Napoli e Pompei, and at the national level of the Ministero dei Beni Culturali. The project team, led by Wallace-Hadrill, was invited by the Comitato Scientifico di Settore for heritage to give a three-hour presentation of its results in order to inform the spending of a European grant to Pompeii (24 May 2012). Wallace-Hadrill has twice taken part in national debates on the future of heritage organised by Professor Andrea Carandini (La Sapienza, Rome) in Florence at the Fondazione Florens (November 2011 and November 2012) (5.6).

5) the municipal authorities of Ercolano, and on the local community and economy. With these public authorities as partners, the project has set up the Associazione Herculaneum, with Wallace-Hadrill as its President, and the Herculaneum Study Centre as its principal organ, with Wallace-Hadrill as its Director. Through a state grant of 800,000 euros the Associazione has been able to set up various projects of collaboration with the local community, notably an outreach programme to local primary schools, and an oral history project recording older inhabitants' attitudes to, and recollections of, the site (5.7). In collaboration with the Comune, the Associazione has made a successful application to the Regione for European funding for 2.2 million euros to create a park over the north-west corner of the site, in an area previously occupied by slums. This is matched by the undertaking of a grant of US$3 million from the Packard Humanities Institute for the cost of demolitions and expropriations (5.8).

6) the continued work of the Herculaneum Conservation project which has been granted by the Packard Humanities Institute six grants totalling five million euros since 2009 (5.9). This is the only sponsored project of its sort in the heritage sector in Italy. The recent success of the project, including the impact of Wallace-Hadrill's monograph, has led to the extension of the programme for another five years and the first grant towards a new project to build a new onsite museum.

7) public perceptions of conservation issues related to Vesuvian sites: especially in the last three years, the project has attracted considerable press interest, extensively in Italy (5.10), but also in UK and the USA (New York Times, 22 April 2013). It formed one focus of the recent (2011 and 2013) UNESCO reports into the state of conservation in Pompeii, and the project was held up in the report as a model of best practice. `The results of this partnership are remarkable and there has been a very great improvement in the overall condition of the site. There are lessons, for example on working practices, which could be translated into other sites even without a private/public partnership' (5.11).

Sources to corroborate the impact

5:1: e-mail (4 September 2013) and statistics from person 1 (Development Coordinator, Knowledge Commissioning, BBC).

5.2: http://mahirnaem.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/the-other-pompeii-life-and-death-in.html

5.3: Paul Roberts, Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (published to accompany the exhibition at the British Museum from 28 March to 29 September, London: British Museum Press, 2013), 8-9 (acknowledgements), 302-304 (bibliography, 39 citations), 265-269 (the Cardo V drain in Herculaneum).

5.4: e-mail (27 June 2013) from person 2 (Deputy Director, British Museum)

5.5: New South Wales, Board of Studies, Stage 6, Syllabus Core Study: Cities of Vesuvius — Pompeii and Herculaneum (pp. 30-31);
http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/pdf_doc/ancient-history-st6-syl-from2010.pdf

5.6: http://www.fondazioneflorens.it/archaeological-and-historical-sites/?lang=en&ref=06-november

5.7: http://www.herculaneumcentre.org/: iniziative in corso

5.8: http://www.herculaneum.org/hcp-home/eng/azionecongiunta.html

5.9: Six grants from Packard Humanities Institute since September 2009 in support of Herculaneum Conservation Project, totalling 4,956,894 euros, HCP accounts as of August 2013.

5.10: Francesco Erbani, `Intervista all'archeologo Wallace-Hadrill', Repubblica 30 June 2011

5.11: UNESCO WHC/ICOMOS Report on the mission to the archaeological areas of Pompei, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata (c829), Italy, 2-4 December 2010, 10-13 January 2011, p. 42 (see too pp. 12-13, 41-42).