Talk: "Of Pompeii and Politics" by J. Theodore Peña

• Event Date: Sunday, November 1, 2015
• Time: 1:00 pm (CDT)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL
• Cost: Free Admission

• Talk

Part of the Archaeological Institute of America Lecture Series

Early on the morning of Saturday, November 6, 2010, a substantial portion of the so-called Schola Armaturarum—a structure of unclear function on the north side of Pompeii’s Via dell’Abbondanza—collapsed into a pile of rubble. This incident, not the first of its kind at Pompeii in recent years, was immediately seized upon by the center-left opposition in Italy as part of its efforts to bring down the embattled government of then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. This touched off a fierce debate across Italy regarding the state of the country’s archaeological heritage, raising several fundamental issues of cultural heritage management, such as the appropriate roles of the state, the private sector, and foreign entities. This presentation, after reviewing the history of the administration of the site of Pompeii in the years leading up to the Schola Armaturarum collapse, endeavors to disentangle and interpret the complex series of events surrounding this incident and its aftermath, considering their implications for the future of the site of Pompeii and for Italy's archaeological heritage more generally.

Visit http://www.archaeological.org/societies/centralillinoisurbana (external link) for more information.

PLEASE NOTE: This event was originally scheduled to start at 3:00pm.