June 26: This is currently the second week of a three week field season at the villas of Ancient Roman Stabiae, where prof. Thomas howe has been coordinator general for all archaeology and planning since 2002. The site, four km. from Pompeii, is the largest concenration of well preserved enormous Roman seaside villas, and Howe has been coordinating archaeological and building projects there since he was principal author of the Master Plan in 2001. Excavations and the new 100-room Vesuvian study institute have been underway since 2007. 

 

Two S.U. students worked with Howe’s teams in 2010 (Katherine Maples and Giorgia Lo Schiavo) and this year two others, Sarah Kinney (Classics and Studio Art, and Chandler Johnson, Architectural Studies) have joined one of the Stabiae teams, an architectural recording team from the School of Architecture of the University of Maryland. (There are three other teams in the field this year coordinated by Howe, from Columbia University, the Hermitage State Museums of St. Petersburg, Russia and the University of Molise). 

 

The team is in the process of recording the complex three dimensional architecture of the huge Villa Arianna at Stabiae with a method Howe first developed in Rome in the early 1990’s, using a theodolite laser surveying instrument to “draw” upstanding architecture with great precision. The technique was further developed in 2011 with new “reflectorless” theodolites by Howe with extensive new additions in aspects of CAD planning by advanced students from the School of Architecture of the University of Maryland.