#Pompeii Records

[affairesasuivre]

Hadsel / Beirut (Pompeii Records, 2023)

Hadsel est le premier nouvel album de Beirut depuis la sortie de Gallipoli en 2019 et le premier sur Pompeii Records, le propre label de Zach Condon. Enregistré sur l’île norvégienne de Hadsel peu après qu’une crise physique et mentale l’ait contraint à annuler sa tournée de 2019, Zach cherchait un endroit pour se rétablir après avoir été laissé dans un état de choc et de doute.

Travaillant dans l’isolement, Zach était perdu dans une transe, trébuchant aveuglément sur un effondrement mental mis de côté depuis son adolescence. C’est arrivé brusquement et ça l’a sonné. Il s’est retrouvé confronté à beaucoup de choses passées et présentes tandis que la beauté de la nature, les aurores boréales et les terribles tempêtes jouaient un spectacle impressionnant autour de lui. Les quelques heures de lumière révélaient la beauté insondable des montagnes et des fjords alors que les longs crépuscules le remplissaient d’une excitation méditative. Zach aime penser que ces paysages sont en quelque sorte présents dans la musique. La collection de chansons qui en résulte reflète magnifiquement cette vulnérabilité, ce sens de l’autodétermination et la conviction qu’après l’effondrement, on peut réapprendre à se débrouiller seul.

Hadsel

Arctic Forest

Baion

So Many Plans

 Melbu

Stokmarknes

Island Life

Spillhaugen

January 18th

Süddeutsches Ton-Bild

The Tern

Regulatory

[blueiscoool]

More than 200 Survivors of Mount Vesuvius Eruption Discovered in Ancient Roman Records

After Mount Vesuvius erupted, survivors from the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum fled, starting new lives elsewhere.

On Aug. 24, in A.D. 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted, shooting over 3 cubic miles of debris up to 20 miles (32.1 kilometers) in the air. As the ash and rock fell to Earth, it buried the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

According to most modern accounts, the story pretty much ends there: Both cities were wiped out, their people frozen in time.

It only picks up with the rediscovery of the cities and the excavations that started in earnest in the 1740s.

But recent research has shifted the narrative. The story of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius is no longer one about annihilation; it also includes the stories of those who survived the eruption and went on to rebuild their lives.

The search for survivors and their stories has dominated the past decade of my archaeological fieldwork, as I’ve tried to figure out who might have escaped the eruption. Some of my findings are featured in an episode of the new PBS documentary, “Pompeii: The New Dig.”

Making it out alive:

Pompeii and Herculaneum were two wealthy cities on the coast of Italy just south of Naples. Pompeii was a community of about 30,000 people that hosted thriving industry and active political and financial networks. Herculaneum, with a population of about 5,000, had an active fishing fleet and a number of marble workshops. Both economies supported the villas of wealthy Romans in the surrounding countryside.

In popular culture, the eruption is usually depicted as an apocalyptic event with no survivors: In episodes of the TV series “Doctor Who” and “Loki,” everyone in Pompeii and Herculaneum dies.

But the evidence that people could have escaped was always there.

The eruption itself continued for over 18 hours. The human remains found in each city account for only a fraction of their populations, and many objects you might have expected to have remained and be preserved in ash are missing: Carts and horses are gone from stables, ships missing from docks, and strongboxes cleaned out of money and jewelry.

All of this suggests that many – if not most – of the people in the cities could have escaped if they fled early enough.

Some archaeologists have always assumed that some people escaped. But searching for them has never been a priority.

So I created a methodology to determine if survivors could be found. I took Roman names unique to Pompeii or Herculaneum – such as Numerius Popidius and Aulus Umbricius – and searched for people with those names who lived in surrounding communities in the period after the eruption. I also looked for additional evidence, such as improved infrastructure in neighboring communities to accommodate migrants.

After eight years of scouring databases of tens of thousands of Roman inscriptions on places ranging from walls to tombstones, I found evidence of over 200 survivors in 12 cities. These municipalities are primarily in the general area of Pompeii. But they tended to be north of Mount Vesuvius, outside the zone of the greatest destruction.

It seems as though most survivors stayed as close as they could to Pompeii. They preferred to settle with other survivors, and they relied on social and economic networks from their original cities as they resettled.

Some migrants prosper:

Some of the families that escaped apparently went on to thrive in their new communities.

The Caltilius family resettled in Ostia – what was then a major port city to the north of Pompeii, 18 miles from Rome. There, they founded a temple to the Egyptian deity Serapis. Serapis, who wore a basket of grain on his head to symbolize the bounty of the earth, was popular in harbor cities like Ostia dominated by the grain trade. Those cities also built a grand, expensive tomb complex decorated with inscriptions and large portraits of family members.

Members of the Caltilius family married into another family of escapees, the Munatiuses. Together, they created a wealthy, successful extended family.

The second-busiest port city in Roman Italy, Puteoli – what’s known as Pozzuoli today – also welcomed survivors from Pompeii. The family of Aulus Umbricius, who was a merchant of garum, a popular fermented fish sauce, resettled there. After reviving the family garum business, Aulus and his wife named their first child born in their adopted city Puteolanus, or “the Puteolanean.”

Others fall on hard times:

Not all the survivors of the eruption were wealthy or went on to find success in their new communities. Some had already been poor to begin with. Others seemed to have lost their family fortunes, perhaps in the eruption itself.

Fabia Secundina from Pompeii – apparently named for her grandfather, a wealthy wine merchant – also ended up in Puteoli. There, she married a gladiator, Aquarius the retiarius, who died at the age of 25, leaving her in dire financial straits.

Three other very poor families from Pompeii – the Avianii, Atilii and Masuri families – survived and settled in a small, poorer community called Nuceria, which goes by Nocera today and is about 10 miles (16.1 kilometers) east of Pompeii.

According to a tombstone that still exists, the Masuri family took in a boy named Avianius Felicio as a foster son. Notably, in the 160 years of Roman Pompeii, there was no evidence of any foster children, and extended families usually took in orphaned children. For this reason, it’s likely that Felicio didn’t have any surviving family members.

This small example illustrates the larger pattern of the generosity of migrants – even impoverished ones – toward other survivors and their new communities. They didn’t just take care of each other; they also donated to the religious and civic institutions of their new homes.

For example, the Vibidia family had lived in Herculaneum. Before it was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius, they had given lavishly to help fund various institutions, including a new temple of Venus, the Roman goddess of love, beauty and fertility.

One female family member who survived the eruption appears to have continued the family’s tradition: Once settled in her new community, Beneventum, she donated a very small, poorly made altar to Venus on public land given by the local city council.

How would survivors be treated today?

While the survivors resettled and built lives in their new communities, government played a role as well.

The emperors in Rome invested heavily in the region, rebuilding properties damaged by the eruption and building new infrastructure for displaced populations, including roads, water systems, amphitheaters and temples.

This model for post-disaster recovery can be a lesson for today. The costs of funding the recovery never seems to have been debated. Survivors were not isolated into camps, nor were they forced to live indefinitely in tent cities. There’s no evidence that they encountered discrimination in their new communities.

Instead, all signs indicate that communities welcomed the survivors. Many of them went on to open their own businesses and hold positions in local governments. And the government responded by ensuring that the new populations and their communities had the resources and infrastructure to rebuild their lives.

By Steven L. Tuck.

[hibi2]

In light of the final Puella Historia event;

PUELLA MAGI AMARYLLIS

VS

PLINY THE ELDER

[luminous-faerie]

sometimes you just have to make terrible music with the people you love and things will be alright for a bit

[regicidal-defenestration]

A Natural History of Fear is an absolutely batshit audio, not least because it leaves you sitting to the sound of a humming top for the final few minutes just so you can process how utterly batshit it just was

[raposarealm]

Man, I was so hoping Amaryllis would be from Victorian period because of her outfit, it really seems similar to that sort of style to me. Or maybe Edwardian, that's already fairly similar to begin with. I everyone so far has had era-related outfits, I'm kinda baffled on this one. On the other hand, the idea of her possibly being responsible for the eruption of Mount Vesuvius is actually really hilarious, I'll admit. And it gives the possibility for her to be a Void type, without violating the game's rules for what makes Void types, Void types (wishing for a curse or misfortune of some form.)

I don't know I have many Thoughts and not all of them are cohesive

[promisedbloodbrainrot]

[captainkaltar]

On April 19th, I made bread Greek Easter biscuits

[dearearlyarchaeologists]

Living for ancient pompeii puns

I finished my Rome book and have now begun one about Pompeii. I’m 65 pages in and I already love it: yes, it covers the volcano, but most of the book is about “this is what the town and daily life of it would have been like, actually.” Fascinating stuff. Things I’ve learned so far:

- The streets in Pompeii have sidewalks sometimes a meter higher than the road, with stepping stones to hop across as “crosswalks.” I’d seen some photos before. The book points out that, duh, Pompeii had no underground drainage, was built on a fairly steep incline, and the roads were more or less drainage systems and water channels in the rain.

- Unlike today, where “dining out” is expensive and considered wasteful on a budget, most people in Pompeii straight up didn’t have kitchens. You had to eat out if you were poor; only the wealthy could afford to eat at home.

- Most importantly, and I can’t believe in all the pop culture of Pompeii this had never clicked for me: Pompeii had a population between 6-35,000 people. Perhaps 2,000 died in the volcano. Contemporary sources talk about the bay being full of fleeing ships. Most people got the hell out when the eruption started. The number who died are still a lot, and it’s still gruesome and morbid, but it’s not “an entire town and everyone in it.” This also makes it difficult for archeologists, apparently (and logically): those who remained weren’t acting “normally,” they were sheltering or fleeing a volcano. One famous example is a wealthy woman covered in jewelry found in the bedroom in the glaridator barracks. Scandal! She must have been having an affair and had it immortalized in ash! The book points out that 17 other people and several dogs were also crowded in that one small room: far more likely, they were all trying to shelter together. Another example: Houses are weirdly devoid of furniture, and archeologists find objects in odd places. (Gardening supplies in a formal dining room, for example.) But then you remember that there were several hours of people evacuating, packing their belongings, loading up carts and getting out… maybe the gardening supplies were brought to the dining room to be packed and abandoned, instead of some deeper esoteric meaning. The book argues that this all makes it much harder to get an accurate read on normal life in a Roman town, because while Pompeii is a brilliant snapshot, it’s actually a snapshot of a town undergoing major evacuation and disaster, not an average day.

- Oh, another great one. Outside of a random laundry place in Pompeii, someone painted a mural with two scenes. One of them referenced Virgil’s Aeneid. Underneath that scene, someone graffiti’d a reference to a famous line from that play, except tweaked it to be about laundry. This is really cool, the book points out, because it implies that a) literacy and education was high enough that one could paint a reference and have it recognized, and b) that someone else could recognize it and make a dumb play on words about it and c) the whole thing, again, means that there’s a certain amount of literacy and familiarity with “Roman pop culture” even among fairly normal people at the time.

[reasonsforhope]

This is kind of a weird reason for hope, honestly, but it genuinely changed how I think about catastrophe.

Historical fact that you probably do not know:

At least 30-50% of the population of Pompeii survived.

Maybe even the majority of the people of Pompeii survived.

(The numbers 30-50% there are according Professor J. Theodore Peña, a professor of ancient Roman archeology who studies Pompeii, whom I took a class on Pompeii with in 2018. The numbers of "maybe even the majority" are from articles linked below.)

Yes, that Pompeii, the one where the entire city was swallowed by a volcanic eruption.

And no, I'm not kidding. x, x, x, x, x, x

So how this is possible, that anyone could survive, when the entire city was literally buried in volcanic ash? And the answer is that the eruption actually took place over the course of almost 24 hours, as the earthquakes and clouds of smoke emitting from Pompeii gradually got worse and worse, followed by the ejection of ash and giant stones that gradually escalated, until the fifth pyroclastic flow (aka giant wave of searing hot ash) hit the city.

So, people had a bit less than 24 hours to flee the city. And many of them did, whether by boat or cart or horse or foot. And many of them made it.

Pompeii is the iconic, ultimate example we have, culturally, for a natural disaster that causes complete annihilation.

But it never caused complete annihilation at all. Not of the people who lived there.

I think climate change, ultimately, is going to be like Pompeii. Yes, there will be natural disasters. Yes, it will keep getting worse for a while.

Yes, people will die, and yes, we do need to act fast, and we need to do all that we can to save every single living being that we can.

But unlike the people of Pompeii, we have the ability to fix most of the effects of climate change. We have the ability to cool the planet down from whatever temperature it ultimately hits. (Masterpost on this here.)

Natural disasters fucking suck. But as the true story of Pompeii exemplifies, they are often a lot more survivable than we think. And we have benefits and resources and technology and knowledge above all communication that the people of Pompeii never did - in fact, we're getting so good at building for and detecting and warning for natural disasters that the number of people dying from natural disasters has been plummeting, even as natural disasters are getting worse and worse (x).

We are going to survive climate change (x). We are going to fix as much of it as we can (x). And we are going to rebuild afterward.

Because as the many survivors of Pompeii show, that's what humans do.

[phantom-does-a-thing]

“They were baked alive by the heat of the lava” no they weren’t

[uncleclaudius]

Carbonized money purse found in Herculaneum.

Because wood is perishable, items like this were not preserved in the archeological record and it is only through excavations in Pompeii and Herculaneum that we know these existed at all.

[whencyclopedia]

Roman Daily Life

From the early days of the Roman Republic through the volatile reigns of such ignoble emperors as Caligula, Nero, and Commodus, the Roman Empire continued to expand, stretching its borders to encompass the entire Mediterranean Sea as well as expanding northward to Gaul and Britain. History records the exploits of the heroes as well as the tirades of the emperors. Despite the sometimes shameful deeds of the imperial office, the empire was built on the backs of its citizens - the unsung people who lived a relatively quiet existence, and who are often ignored by history. Rome was a cosmopolitan city with Greeks, Syrians, Jews, North Africans, Spaniards, Gauls, and Britons, and like any society, the average Roman citizen awoke each morning, labored, relaxed, and ate, and while his or her daily life could often be hectic, he or she would always survive.

Population Movement

Outside the cities, in the towns and on the small farms, people lived a much simpler life - dependent almost entirely on their own labor. The daily life of the average city dweller, however, was a lot different and most often routine. The urban areas of the empire - whether it was Rome, Pompeii, Antioch, or Carthage - were magnets to many people who left smaller towns and farms seeking a better way of life. However, the unfulfilled promise of jobs forced countless people to live in the poorer parts of the city. The jobs they sought were often not there, resulting in an epidemic of homeless inhabitants. The work that was available to these new émigrés, however, was difficult to obtain. Slaves performed almost all of the menial jobs as well as many of the professions such as teachers, doctors, surgeons, and architects. Most of the freedmen worked at various trades, for example, as bakers, fishmongers, or carpenters. Occasionally, poor women would serve the affluent as hairdressers, midwives, or dressmakers.

Continue reading...

[glassfirefly]

Two stills of a previously unreleased interview from the Live at Pompeii studio re-recordings.

You can watch the new footage in the video: