4 Years in the making

2011

    For the inaugural post of this blog, I would like to introduce the latest book on Pompeii: Pompeii: Art, Industry and Infrastructure.  The idea for this book sprung to mind at the 108th annual meetings of the Archaeological Institute of America in San Diego in January 2007 (although as we state in the intro, this is not a conference proceedings).  As one of the presenters in the Pompeii session that year I was struck by the number of younger scholars presenting.  As the papers were presented, a pattern began to emerge.  There were other papers on Pompeii in disparate sessions that year as well; as I attended those papers the pattern continued. As we began talking, it became apparent that the majority of papers presented that year in some way took their cue from the ideas and approaches to the material record of Pompeii born out of a veritable renaissance of scholarship in the 1990s. But, rather that walking some well worn path, these emerging scholars pushed the ideas of the last twenty years further by applying them to new sets of data and/or combining earlier approaches.  During the many discussions with fellow Pompeii scholars at the conference I suggested we publish these ideas in one place. Two fellow colleagues, Miko Flohr and Eric Poehler, were as excited about this idea as I.  We immediately set to work.

    There is much more involved that I imagined in creating an edited volume of chapters with twelve authors. I am, however, impressed at how well everyone worked together and how closely everyone followed deadlines.  The result is a volume each of us can be proud of (I anxiously await the reviewers chopping block). It is interesting to me the changes that have occurred for the three editors from book's inception to its physical printing.  In 2007 we three were doctoral students feverishly working on our dissertations and somehow we thought it would be a good idea to add to this burden by editing such a volume. Each of us has since graduated and moved on to full time positions. I have learned much through this enterprise, and am very happy with its final product.
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