POMPEII, Italy — One morning, in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, a shepherd was leading his flock of sheep up a grassy slope above the ruins of Pompeii. He looked down a few yards and whacked a grazing sheep with his staff, to make sure it didn’t get too close to the edge and fall. “It can happen,” said the pastor, Gaspare de Martino.
In recent years, the vast archaeological park of Pompeii, a city buried alive by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, has turned to high-tech options to maintain its excavated ruins. A surveillance drone makes a monthly flight over the approximately 10,000 rooms exhumed from the site. Artificial intelligence programs analyze aerial images for new cracks, fallen stones and other signs of erosion. But to prevent the third of the park that remains hidden under pumice stone and meters of earth from being filled with thorns, wild hedges and trees, Pompeii has found another solution.
Without the sheep “you would have a kind of jungle that would invade the archaeological structures and the site”said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the park.
He said he came up with the idea to bring the sheep after watching them keep land on top of dikes in the North Sea, saying Pompeii’s sheep would devour invasive vegetation, destructive roots and rugged terrain that could lead to that landslides buried the City.
“They are stopping the start of something,” he said.
But Zuchtriegel recognized that his new project was as much about reimagining the future of Pompeii’s marketing as preserving its archaeological past. For a City most closely associated with choking clouds of ash and blasts of incinerating heat from one of the most horrifying natural disasters in recorded history, the sheep — along with newly planted vineyards, orchards in ancient courtyards and plans for local olive oil — are part of a Pompeian rebranding campaign to move away from fire and brimstone and toward farm-to-table.
“I even dream of wool,” said Zuchtriegel, as the sheep bleated around him.
Zuchtriegel has sought to use the sheep to introduce autistic children to the park, believing that it creates a more memorable and authentic Pompeii experience than a lecture on the four styles of Pompeii wall art.
As De Martino began herding the sheep, they made a rowdy parade through the Vesuvius Gate and up a dirt path outside the park.
Giuseppe Mingo, 59, one of the maintenance workers, watched them leave, the ruins behind them and the volcano looming overhead. “It’s just like in the old days,” he said.
By: Jason Horowitz
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6527257, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-01-11 23:50:08
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