Some parts of Pompeii haven't been excavated yet. Anyone know

[raccoon]

why somebody hasn't excavated them?

[Ozymanithrax]

1. When I visited years ago, I was told that some areas are held back...

for future archeologists. Also, Archeology is expensive, and there is not enough money to do the whole thing.

[damntexdem]

6. Yes, to dig it all out now would be to act like . . .

ash holes!

;-)

[Motown_Johnny]

20. ok, that was a good one

[Warpy]

9. My guess is that it's money

Vesuvius is a ticking time bomb and it will go off again, burying everything all over again. It doesn't make any sense to have it all doubly buried.

[RaleighNCDUer]

17. Yep. And archeologist know that their science, or art, is constantly developing.

Once something is excavated, it is excavated forever. Imagine if all of Pompei had been excavated in 1910, before the techniques of modern archeology were known - all the information that would have been lost forever.

As scientists, archeologists know that there is stuff they don't yet know.

[MadHound]

2. Money, time, accessibility, politics, war,

There are a number of reasons why. Archeology is a field that is dependent upon a lot of factors, especially archeology in foreign countries. Some digs you might go in for a year or two, a new regime comes to power, and then it's another decade before you can get back to that dig.

[sinkingfeeling]

3. Pompeii is huge. It is impossible for a person to see all that has been excavated in 8 hours. And it

costs a lot of money.

[Davis_X_Machina]

11. Preservation of what's already been excavated...

...suffers from a lack of money, or serious interest from the government in Rome. While Pompeii may be famous, and something of a cash-cow for MiBAC, it's still located in Campagna. If you think we've got lingering North-South issues, try Italy.

[CreekDog]

4. i thought they leave portions unexcavated because future techologies may yield better conclusions

provided there are intact materials/remains/remnants to use the new technologies and approaches on.

once excavated, degrading will hasten.

[Sal Minella]

12. This sounds logical to me. I know when the springs at Bath in England

were excavated, and the offerings of coins and silver and effigies got older the further they went down, the archaeologists finally stopped because they wanted to leave the oldest offerings for a later time when archeological techniques can yield more information from undisturbed sites.

[MattBaggins]

14. This is a big reason. Leave sections untouched for future scientists

with better technology.

This is a core tenant of good Archeology.

[damntexdem]

5. Methods improve over time. Current digs might screw up future findings.

It's therefore important to leave something for what may be the improved tech and techniques of the future.

[Behind the Aegis]

7. I have heard two reasons.

The first was there has been some issues with the Italian government and archaeological groups, but I don't know/haven't heard what the source of the controversy. The second is that some of the areas are quite dangerous and exploring them presents certain challenges. Those are the things I have heard over the past two months, I don't know how accurate the information is (heard them on programs on the History Channel, the Travel Channel, and one other one, possible NatGeo).

[Tyrone Slothrop]

8. It's an entire city

I didn't even come close to seeing all of the stuff that they did have excavated when I was there 3 or 4 years ago. (I think they said they've excavated about 1/4 of it.) It's a very expensive, time-consuming process.

On the same subject, I was also surprised to see (on the same trip) that there are/were still teams of archaeologists excavating/working on the buildings at the Forum in Rome. We asked around; same deal there. It's really expensive and takes a lot of time to excavate and preserve stuff -- even when you know exactly where it is and there's a major city on it.

[southernyankeebelle]

10. I have been there years ago. I have family living in Naples. Love Italy.

[Swede]

13. Why must you post about digging up old dirt?

It gets tiresome.

[kenny blankenship]

15. The Mole Men have forbidden it!

Encroach not on the realm of the Mole Men, or their curse will awaken the volcano and rain liquid fire and brimstones upon you.

[slackmaster]

16. I'm LOLing at myself for mis-reading the verb in the OP as "evacuated"

:rofl:

[jobendorfer]

18. two reasons

1. A large grab-bag of reasons which all boil down to "lack of money":

a. The direct labor of excavation is expensive

b. There may be structural issues. For example, at Herculaneum, you have to dig through pyroclastic flows that have hardened into tufa ... often accompanied by toxic gases. At Pompeii, you have to shore up structures that collapsed under the weight of the ash cloud from Vesuvius.

c. There may be confounding legal issues, like suburbs of Naples sitting on top of what you want to excavate. The Agora in Athens was underneath the "downtown" a hundred years ago -- a fire destroyed the neighborhood, and the government bought out the residents clearing the way for excavations. Delphi was also underneath a village, and the French Archeological School bought out the villagers and relocated them about a half-mile up the road.
But none of this was cheap to do.

d. Whatever you dig up has to be conserved, which often costs more than the excavation itself

e. Once what you've dug up is conserved, it has to be stored somewhere ...

2. Often sites are left unexcavated on the theory that future generations, with better technology, will do a better
job of extracting artifacts and information from the site.

J.

[Xithras]

19. I see that nobody has mentioned the other major issue...

Portions of Pompeii and Herculaneum that HAVE been excavated are already suffering from serious degradation problems. Some of it is human caused (theft, vandalism), and some is more natural (weathering, sunlight, trees and grasses expanding root systems). Either way, the result is the same. Buildings that have survived under the soil for more than a millennia are often seeing significant amounts of damage within decades of being exposed.

Besides, based on radar ground mapping, it appears that most of the more important areas have been excavated already. The remaining parts are predominantly commercial and residential areas, by most guesses. While there are undoubtedly treasures there, the reality is that we've already excavated some commercial and residential areas, and further excavations would reveal more of the same. There is no pressing archaeological need to excavate the rest.

That last point needs to be read with your mind aware of another fact too. We don't think about it often, but Pompeii is still a grave site. By some estimates, there might still be 10-15,000 people buried in the un-excavated portions of the city and former shoreline area. Many would argue that their final resting places shouldn't be disturbed without a real, scientific reason for doing so. Idle curiosity shouldn't be enough.