Paola Pesaresi

The arrival of visitors to any destination introduces economic incentives for the development of services and products. This holds true for archaeological sites that are open to visitation. As tourism increases, an expansion of physical infrastructure (e.g., buildings, roads, and utilities) becomes necessary. Modes of social interaction will change if traditional subsistence activities such as those centered on agriculture, animal husbandry, hunting, gathering, and nonmonetary exchange are replaced by vending to tourists or, in developed countries, if tourism-related business enterprises replace, compete with, or are not compatible with previously established businesses. Competition and friction among commercial enterprises can generate unprecedented sources of conflict. Construction can disturb or destroy archaeological deposits; in general, the closer the construction to the archaeological site to which visitors are attracted, the more likely that this will happen. A sustainable tourism at destination archaeological sites considers the social and environmental impacts of tourism infrastructure development and seeks to render these as beneficial. It anticipates and provides for a rewarding interaction between local populations and visitors. And, of course, it must provide authentic representations of the past that are associated with the physical remains of the archaeological site.

This paper presents the results of an internship research project on sectilia in the Casa del Rilievo di Telefo in Herculaneum and across the archaeological site in general. The main research objective was to identify and classify opus sectile and analyse the state of conservation by identifying the ancient stones and marbles. Herculaneum is an ideal place for such a study as it has an important collection of relatively well-preserved ancient marbles from all over the Mediterranean, dating from the first century BC to the first century AD. Special attention was paid to the Casa del Rilievo di Telefo and its so-called Marble Room. This research took place in the context of the Herculaneum Conservation Project HCP), a public-private partnership for the conservation and enhancement of Herculaneum. The study adopted HCP’s interdisciplinary approach, in particular, by using its GIS database.

This paper uses the archaeological site of Herculaneum, Italy, as a case study on which to ground the complex debate surrounding heritage ‘sustainability’. The authors seek to quantify and qualify current and potential ‘reciprocal heritage benefits’ thanks to available information from strategic research – including the development of improved visitor and engagement strategies. They argue that it is necessary to re-examine the dynamic role that cultural heritage could potentially play in contemporary society, not just looking to reduce threats but seeking to transform them, wherever possible, into opportunities for ensuring that cultural heritage can contribute benefits to the modern world and – within a reciprocal relationship – gain benefits from a society that is more involved in its management and conservation. The authors conclude that much more needs to be done not just in terms of measuring progress but also in terms of identifying the correct indicators to measure in the fir...

The Herculaneum Conservation Project is a public-private initiative to conserve and enhance the Roman city of Herculaneum, Italy. Emphasis is placed on simplifying and reducing costs of archaeological site management by reinstating site infrastructure, promoting rolling programmes of maintenance, and research and trials to improve conservation methods. After preliminary research in the site archives, the 100 Mortars Project is now underway and aims to study the wide range of mortars present in the archaeological site – both original Roman mortars and those used in twentieth-century restoration campaigns. More than one hundred mortars have been sampled for analysis so far and it is hoped that in a few years almost a complete range of ancient and modern mortars from Herculaneum will be available. This will not only increase knowledge about the site but will also contribute to the conservation of Herculaneum and other open-air archaeological sites, thanks to the development of works st...

Herculaneum, buried by Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, was only extensively excavated during the twentieth century, revealing a remarkable level of preservation but also fragility of what had survived of this Roman seaside town. By the turn of the century, the conservation challenges, paired with the limited capacity of the authorities to respond, was putting the archaeological site at risk. The Herculaneum Conservation Project ('HCP'), a public-private project underway since 2001, has helped turnaround this situation with the presence of an interdisciplinary team working all year round alongside the public authority, today the Archaeological Park of Herculaneum. With the site in a more stable condition, HCP's attention in the last ten years shifted to building up knowledge and competencies for the self-sufficiency of the Park authority in the face of core long-term management obligations. A new focus on conservation proposals that meet the site's needs but are suited to public tendering found its maximum expression in planning long-term site maintenance cycles. Through the voices of the practitioners involved, the paper recounts the resources and approaches that have been developed in this regard, in particular the specific GIS module that breaks down the archaeological site into the items to be maintained and their relative importance. This massive register of 'objects'-walls, architraves, doors, frescoes, mosaics, etc.-is the backbone of the three-year maintenance cycles developed by HCP adopting an innovative procurement framework for co-sourcing services and works in Italy, the first of which is now being implemented by the Park. A web-based application accessible by operators on site allows real time transmission of monitoring data and records of site-works underway to the database and GIS platform, satisfying immediate administrative needs and quality controls but also delineating the scope of subsequent maintenance cycles. Technological and management tools, shaped by, and responsive to, the needs of the site and their users (the heritage practitioners involved), have been put at the service of the entire life cycle of programmed maintenance at an urban scale, both administrative and technical aspects. This is part of a wider upward spiral of management improvements for the long-term sustainability of this important archaeological site.

The paper is the contribution of the authors to the guide book published in Italian and English by the Parco Archeologico di Ercolano for the reopening to the public of the the House of the Bicentenary at the archaeological site of Herculaneum, Italy. The paper explores the peculiarities of the restoration strategies that took place in the XX century and their consequences in terms of conservation challenges to be tackled today.

It is worth grounding the complex debate surrounding heritage 'sustainability' in hard facts, and one useful data set is gathered by the World Heritage Centre. Analysis of threats identified for cultural heritage sites (regardless of location or typology) indicates that global problems stemming from management issues, development projects and tourism are all in the top ten. As the authors of an earlier World Heritage report on Reflection on the Trends of the State of Conservation note, 'management and legal issues represent one of the key threats to World Heritage properties , and have done so consistently since 2005'. This trend should prompt us to realize that the energy dedicated to conserving the physical testimony of the past needs to be matched, if not surpassed, by that dedicated to managing change proactively, both within and without heritage sites. The Policy for the Integration of a Sustainable Development Perspective into the Processes of the World Heritage Convention finally integrates this clarity of thinking into the international heritage community’s references. In this context, it is necessary to re-examine the dynamic role that cultural heritage
could potentially play in contemporary society – not just looking to reduce threats but seeking to transform them, wherever possible, into opportunities for ensuring that cultural heritage can contribute benefits to the modern world and, within a reciprocal relationship, gain benefits from a society that is more involved in its management and conservation. This drives to the heart of the sustainability debate, but in order to ground what risks being a theoretical discussion in reality, this paper will use the example of Herculaneum to quantify and qualify
current and potential ‘reciprocal heritage benefits’ with the information available today that builds on strategic research, including the  development of improved visitor and engagement strategies. However, ultimately it shows how much more needs to be done not just in terms of measuring progress but also in terms of identifying the correct indicators to measure in the first place.

Addressing the use of reinforced concrete for restoration at archaeological sites, Paola Pesaresi, the conservation architect with the Herculaneum Conservation Project, reviews how concrete was employed at Herculaneum during the first half of the twentieth century, and how the subsequent deterioration of the concrete elements incorporated into the site is now being handled by authorities there.

Shelters are encountered on many archaeological sites of the Mediterranean Their presence is mostly related to the need to protect specific architectural or decorative features exposed during excavation and believed to be too fragile to be left exposed. Consequently shelters tend to be isolated or randomly scattered within the archaeological site. The process of planning designing and building shelters usually follows the period immediately after excavation. If the area to be covered or the setting is particularly complex a provisional shelter is often provided while funds are raised for the design and construction of a permanent one. If these do not become available then provisional shelters themselves often become permanent. Sheltering on an archaeological site brings formidable challenges and contradictions. On the one hand a shelter should confer good protection to the archaeological remains below by reducing the rate of deterioration from environmental causes On the other it should impose the least possible aesthetic impact on the site and harmonize with the archaeological and natural landscape. It also needs to provide quality in the visitor experience in presenting the protected remains.

At the beginning of the st century the international conservation community gathered in the USA to take stock of the state of play with regard to protective shelters for archaeological sites to learn from a century long tradition of shelter building and draw conclusions that could be used at unsheltered archaeological sites. On the other side of the world conservation specialists wanting to assess conditions in a large Roman house in Herculaneum Italy could not safely access the building due to the risks presented by the corroded and cracked reinforced concrete beams supporting the modern roofs.  Yet remedial work on the roof could not take place without first making safe the damaged mosaic floor on which scaffolding would need to rest.  At around the same time an assessment of over mosaics under protective shelters within Israeli archaeological sites revealed that more than half those mosaics were deteriorating with many being entirely removed and other conservation approaches adopted. It was this context of ongoing connections and contrasts between conservation theory and site management practice together with the continuing challenge of sheltering archaeological sites that led to the Symposium on Protective Shelters for Archaeological Sites held a decade later in and with a specific focus on the Mediterranean region. This introductory chapter aims to capture within the structure that the event followed key insights from each case study brought to the symposium many of which emerged as their authors later reflected on the issues raised on return to their specific sites and further updated their papers Indeed this volume has become something more than just the proceedings of the symposium offering considerations matured over a greater period of time and through extended peer exchange something that has been at the heart of the MOSAIKON Programme since it began but also at the core of the approaches of the Herculaneum Conservation Project which hosted the symposium. It is hoped that the insights that emerge from this introductory overview from the papers themselves that follow and from the brief notes of the closing discussion session of the symposium will between them offer pointers for heritage practitioners in the field to approach sheltering at archaeological sites in a way that builds on progress to date and enhances future practice in the sector.

This volume is published in time to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the launch of excavations at Herculaneum by Amedeo Maiuri. Thanks to the Herculaneum Conservation Project which has been studying and conserving the archaeological site for over a decade, the authors have come into daily contact with the results of Maiuri' s extraordinary legacy of excavation and restoration that he carried out from 1927 to 1961. His ambitious dream to uncover the ancient Roman city was fulfilled by organizing every step of site works from excavation to restoration efficiently, through to the on-site display of the most significant finds. In this way the site became a sort of open-air museum in which the artefacts were contextualised; not just works of ancient art but mainly those finds which illustrated daily life in the past. Unfortunately, over the years as visitor numbers increased so did the risk of theft and damage to the objects, leading over time to their removal to storerooms. Maiuri' s innovative experiment to make Herculaneum an open-air museum was gradually forgotten.
The first part of the volume, by Domenico Camardo and Mario Notomista, follows the personal and professional life of Amedeo Maiuri, from his early experiences in Greece through to his return to Naples as superintendent, when he turned his attention to Herculaneum. There then follows a contribution by Paola Pesaresi who reconstructs how he organized his site works and discusses his restoration methodology at Herculaneum. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill' s chapter explores instead Maiuri' s extraordinary abilities as an advocate for Herculaneum, raising awareness of its significance among the general public. Massimo Osanna also focuses on Maiuri' s abilities as a communicator, but this time through the series of displays he set up within the archaeological spaces at Pompeii and Herculaneum.

With a view to highlighting difficulties and responses that may be of interest for large archaeological sites throughout the Mediterranean, the second contribution in this volume by the Herculaneum Conservation Project team focuses on the specific challenges of re-establishing a maintenance regime at the archaeological site of Herculaneum. The conservation conditions of this World Heritage property reached a critical point at the end of the 20th century as in-house workers reduced in number and those left were no longer able to be carry out significant work on site. Over the last decade, an interdisciplinary team has been working to reduce the causes of decay and bring the site back to a manageable state. A rolling maintenance programme is being developed as a response to current management circumstances, such as the reality of outsourcing. In this context the GIS database is a key tool for bringing together disparate sources of information and ensuring that they inform future planning.

The Herculaneum Conservation Project has approached the conservation of a large-scale archaeological site (Herculaneum, Italy) suffering widespread forms of decay in two different ways: 1) with a site-wide campaign addressing conservation problems in areas most at risk and 2) with a case-study project for one urban block (Insula Orientalis I) exploring some of the complex conservation challenges in more detail. One of these challenges is how to approach the repair of existing roofing and how to design new forms of protective shelter for those spaces that have never been covered. Short-, mid- and long-term solutions for the repair and substitution of existing roofing are being tested as part of the site-wide campaign, while in the case-study area more enduring solutions (new mid- and long-term) for new shelters are being trialled.