Book Review : Rediscovering antiquity : Karl Weber and the excavation of Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabiae

This book, as emphasized by the author, is a history of the earliest excavations of the Roman towns in Campania which were destroyed by the volcanic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79. It results from Parslow’s rigorous research in the archives in Naples, research facilitated by a catalogue, published in 1979, of the documentation from the 1739– 1861 excavations of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae, held in Archivio di Stato. The excavation history begins in 1709 with the Duc d’Elbeuf’s discoveries of antiquities through well-digging in the area later identi fied as Herculaneum, but it concentrates on the excavations between 1750 and 1764 and the work of Karl Jakob Weber. (Opening paragraph)