Civita’, in 1748 was found to be a comparatively easy task, because the debris that had caused such chaos was light and not compacted.
During the first phase, the excavation was carried out essentially in order to find art objects. Many artifacts considered suitable for the private collection of the Bourbon king, Charles III, were removed, and transported to Naples, reinforcing the political and cultural prestige of the municipality, where they remain to this day, displayed in the Museo Nazionale. Other wall paintings were stripped from the walls and framed, or irreparably destroyed due to excessive damage.
By the end of the 18th century, two wide areas had been uncovered: the Quartiere dei Teatri with the Tempio d’Iside, and the Via delle Tombe with the Villa di Diomede. Two of the archaeologists most connected with this phase were Karl Weber and Francesco La Vega, who wrote detailed diary accounts of the works they carried out, and made very precise designs of the buildings being uncovered.
During the period of French control of Naples (1806-1815), the excavation methodology changed: organization was of greater importance, and an itinerary was drawn up to accommodate the visits of scholars, as well as important personages.
The French wished to excavate the buried town systematically, from west to east. In some periods of their influence, they employed as many as 1500 workmen, and this concentration of effort resulted in the Foro’s, the Terme’s, the Casa di Pansa’s, the Casa di Sallustio’s, and the Casa del Chirurgo’s excavation.
With the return of the Bourbon king Ferdinand I to Naples, this method of organizing the excavations continued, but there were fewer funds available to back the project. By 1860, much of the western portion of the town had been excavated.
Giuseppe Fiorelli directed the Pompeii excavation from 1863 to 1875 – introducing an entirely new system for the project; rather than uncovering the streets first, he imposed a system of uncovering the houses from the top down, in order to excavate the houses from the ground floor up — a much more efficient way of preserving everything that was discovered.
During these excavations of the site, occasional voids in the ash layer had been found that contained human remains. It was Fiorelli who realized these were spaces left by the decomposed bodies, and so devised the technique of injecting plaster into them to recreate the forms of Vesuvius’s victims. This technique is still in use today, with a clear resin now used instead of plaster, as it is more durable, and does not destroy the bones, allowing further analysis.
