Data Mining: Vismara IV - Muller 1904 on

Vismara on Muller's Early Excavation:

• Notes catacombs 6 meters below the ground.
  
• 50 meters away from the city walls in a valley.
  
• Caves, tunnels and cubiculae almost completely destroyed.
  
• Because of the quarrying activity, it was possible to get a read on the stratigraphy of the area (cf. Muller, Il Cimitero, 220)

Data Mining: Vismara III

Summary (of Vismara's Summary) of Bosio's Account (p363):

• Bosio only explored for two hours and produced no precise plan.
• Bosio indicates two cubiculi, very small, and went to lengths to emphasize the modesty of the cemetery (remarks about the complete lack of sculpted marble).
  
• Notes that almost every burial had a menorah (7 branches) incised or painted in red in the [loculi sealing] cement.
• Tombs were sealed with bricks and plaster, on which was painted or inscribed an inscription.
  
• The tombs were carved in both the walls and the floors.
  

Data Mining: Vismara (cont)

On the geology of the area:

• The tufa of the Monteverde region was 'celebrated' and quarried for construction material, leading to a landslide in the area.
  
• The catacombs were excavated in the less compact upper strata.
  
• Scholar De Angelis d'Ossat conducted a study of the geology of the area published in 1939 (La geologia delle catacombe romane, in Roma Sotterranea Cristiana III, Cita del Vaticano).
  
• De Angelis d'Ossat divides the catacombs in the following way (from bottom to top; pp23-25 and fig. 8 of the publication):
• ---30m-10m : tufa of lithoid construction (tufo litoide da costruzione) which was partially visible in the quarries.
• ---10m-7m: homogenous, fine grained and with minute stratification, easily fractured.
  
• ---7m-6m: coarse black volcanic debris with detritis, of non-homogenous and permeable granular volcanic tufa. It was in this layer that the majority of catacombs were dug.
  
• ---6m and above: sandy loam and limestone layer.

Data Mining: Vismara, I cimitieri ebraici a Roma (1986)

Vismara is noted in other works as providing a comprehensive discussionof the geology of the area. He also includes a plan of a section of the catacombs discovered (and planned) by Muller in 1913, previously unknown to us (below).


Other information from Vismara. On location:

• Not far from the catacombs of Pontiana [the catacombs of Pontiana ARE planned by Bosio, a fact we discovered yesterday while browsing the 1659 edition of Bosio's Soterraneo]
• Between Pontiana catacombs and the present Trastevere rail station.
  
• Dug into the hillside of the Monteverde
• Agrees with the general discussion of the difficulties of study confronting early scholars because of instability in the galleries and landslides.
  
• Notes the long duree in which scholars lost track of the catacombs, citing the difficulty of Marucchi and Marchi in determining the location (just like us!) which led de Rossi to conclude in 1864 that the entirety if the catacombs had collapsed.
  
• The region discovered in 1904, Vismarra notes, was likely not the same one as noted by Bosio

On the portion discovered in 1913:

• A region in similarly precarious state of preservation
• Also on the via Portuense
• Documented in a breif notice including schematic plan (without orientation and lacking scale) with transcriptions of the epigraphi and brick stamps found therein.
  
• THIS region had already been destroyed by 1915 and Frey saw only a small portion of it.
  
• The remainder was permanently destroy in a collapse in 1929.

More to come from Vismara...