That time we almost lost a piece of a 2,000-year-old mosaic in Pompeii

We were working on a section of the House of the Faun, carefully lifting a small but detailed floor piece. The suction cup on our lifting rig slipped because the morning dew had made the surface slick, and the fragment tilted at a scary angle. I had to quickly wedge my hand under it to stop it from hitting the ground, which saved it but messed up the grid layout for that whole square. Has anyone else had a close call with a delicate artifact during a dig?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_amy1mo ago

Gotta be honest, that story makes me a bit nervous. Isn't the whole point of the rig and the grid to keep our hands off the artifact? I get wanting to save it, but a sudden grab seems riskier than a controlled drop onto a padded surface. How do you even check for new damage you might have caused?

betty1261mo ago

Wouldn't a controlled drop onto padding still risk micro-fractures in something that old? In my view, the instinct to catch it comes from seeing it as a unique piece of history, not just a numbered fragment. That split-second choice between two bad options is the worst part of field work.