Uncover some Favourites with Guide Lecturer Dr Jamie Sewell

There are hugely important scholars who have been influential to me, including Prof. Ian Haynes who inspired me to become an archaeologist, Mary Beard for her ability to reach a larger audience and my PhD examiners Martin Millett and Tim Cornell whose works on Roman identity and the Roman republic are seminal. That said, I want to give credit to the unsung heroes of archaeology. Famously, Howard Carter “discovered” the tomb of Tutankhamun, but all the great archaeological discoveries of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were facilitated by armies of local workers. It was they who did the back-breaking work and were probably the ones who actually made the discoveries. These days, the accreditation of finds to individual field-team members is generally done much more fairly, but we should never forget the contribution of the nameless workers of the past.

Cosa and Paestum will always be dear to me. Both founded as Latin colonies by the Romans in 273 BC, they were the first sites I studied intensively for my PhD thesis on Roman town-planning and architecture. I now guide at Paestum, and I would love to have the chance to guide at Cosa in southwestern Tuscany (hint, hint, Andante!). Delphi, simply due to the magic of the place. You can read all you like about it, but it is only when you are there, in its scenic, enchanting and charismatic setting, that it becomes easy to imagine why it was chosen as the centre of the ancient Greek world.

Fresh in my mind right now is Terracina, which I first guided on Andante’s Along the Appian Way tour. The late Republican temple complex on the nearby Monte Sant’Angelo hogs the limelight, but I find the town itself more fascinating. It went into steep decline in the 15th century, meaning that there are hardly any structures dating to between 1400 and 1700. As so many medieval structures survive, it is a great showcase for understanding the process of transformation from a Roman to a medieval town.

The wholesale illegal plundering of both terrestrial and marine sites has to be at the top of the list. It has always been going on, but in recent decades, in many places, it has reached a greater scale than ever before. Finding the balance between tourism and conservation is always difficult. Climate change is an increasing problem; for example, the lowering of the water table in the area of Hadrian’s Wall is leading to the destruction of invaluable organic artefacts, previously preserved within anaerobic waterlogged deposits. In the countryside, modern deep ploughing is rendering field survey techniques redundant.

My Pompeii, Herculaneum and Classical Campania tour of May this year was a challenge due to the weather. We suffered almost unbroken, often heavy rain during the day in Pompeii! Hats off to the stalwart, indomitable spirit of the group, without which my (and the Tour Manager’s) day would have been much more difficult. This same tour provided a high point. In the substructures of Pozzuoli’s amphitheatre, I put a lot of effort in trying to reconstruct in people’s minds, the alarming sights, sounds, smells, atmosphere and intense drama of the world beneath the arena immediately prior to an animal hunt (venatio). I was applauded by a Californian guest, who likened my description to the films of “Cecil B. De Mille!”

I would choose any of the most famous senators of the late Roman Republic before Augustus radically curtailed their power and influence. I don’t think enough is made of the incredible skill sets Roman senators possessed. They all had all seen action, understood military strategy and tactics and how to supply, feed and administer vast armies on the move. They were multi-lingual and were expected to be experts in law, constantly giving advice on law to clients, who they represented in the courts. As politicians, senators needed to master public speaking. They proposed legislation and needed a deep understanding of foreign affairs. Senators were unfeasibly wealthy, but they were not the idle rich. In addition, some of them even had time to also become prolific authors, such as Cato the Elder, Cicero or Varro, writing philosophical works, or political and technical treatises. Eating? I make a great Thai curry, and I’d love to witness how their palate reacted to it.