Wilhelmina F. Jashemski

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Wilhelmina F. Jashemski (born July 10, 1910 in York , Nebraska as Wilhelmina Mary Feemster , † December 24, 2007 in Silver Spring , Maryland ) was an American classical archaeologist . In addition to her contributions to the research of the ancient city of Pompeii , she earned special merit in antiquity research with the establishment and establishment of the research field "ancient gardens".

Life

Study and academic career

Wilhelmina Mary Feemster was born in 1910 in York, Nebraska, as the eldest of four children of Howard C. Feemster and his wife Emma L. (nee Groelz). She received a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude in Latin and Mathematics from York College in York, Nebraska , in 1931 . She then continued her studies at the University of Nebraska , where she obtained a Master of Arts in Classics in 1933 . 1942 took place at the University of Chicago their promotion to Ph.D. with the dissertation The Origins and History of the Proconsular and Propraetorian Imperium to 27 BC From 1942 to 1945 she taught at Lindenwood College in St. Charles , Missouri . In 1945 she moved to Washington, DC after her husband got a job at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory . In 1946 she began teaching at the University of Maryland in College Park , where she continued her academic career until she retired in 1980.

During her studies at the University of Chicago, she met her future husband, the physicist Stanley A. Jashemski († 1982). This encouraged her to explore Roman gardens and accompanied her on her later excavations, where he made a large number (more than 30,000) photographs, many of which were published in her publication.

When Jashemski began her fieldwork on ancient gardens, there were few, if any, other archaeologists doing the same research. Accordingly, she organized the international colloquium Ancient Roman Gardens in 1979 and the international colloquium Ancient Roman Villa Gardens in 1984 . In the further course of her career, she organized five international conferences and ultimately made a number of other successful contributions to establish the field of research. 1996 awarded her the Archaeological Institute of America , the Gold Medal for Distinguished Archaeological Achievement .

Jashemski died on December 24, 2007, at the age of 97, of kidney failure at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring . She spoke fluent Italian . Due to her death, her book The Gardens of the Roman Empire remained incomplete, while her book Wild Flowers Amid the Ruins: Greece and Pompeii was published posthumously in 2012 .

Archaeological field research

After she had dealt with the constitutional history of ancient Rome in her dissertation and actually specialized in Roman law, she turned, encouraged by her husband and herself a passionate gardener, to the study of Roman gardens after visiting Pompeii for the first time in 1955 . A research field that had not received much attention up to this point. After another, this time longer stay in Pompeii in 1957, she carried out excavations in Pompeii in 1961, during which she located and exposed the root cavities of ancient plants and took samples of these plants. Later identifications of these plants resulted in a large number of new plantings of the corresponding species in their original locations in the houses and villas of Pompeii. The results of her research on ancient gardens were published in the two-volume work The Gardens of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the Villas Destroyed by Vesuvius . Between 1961 and 1983 she carried out a number of other excavations for the University of Maryland at Pompeii, Boscoreale and Oplontis . A total of 625 gardens were excavated in Pompeii, while 13 gardens of the Villa of Poppaea on Via Sepolcri in Oplontis ( Torre Annunziata ) were excavated in Oplontis . Furthermore, she carried out excavations from 1987 to 1988 in the Villa Adriana near Tivoli and in 1990 in Thuburbo Maius in Tunisia , in the latter, as well as at other sites in Tunisia and Algeria , further gardens were excavated.

Publications (selection)

  • The Origins and History of the Proconsular and Propraetorian Imperium to 27 BC (1950, University of Chicago Press)
  • Letters from Pompeii (1963)
  • The Gardens of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the Villas Destroyed by Vesuvius , Volume 1 (1979)
  • with Elizabeth Blair MacDougall (Ed.): Ancient Roman Gardens (1981)
  • The Gardens of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the Villas Destroyed by Vesuvius , Volume 2 (1993)
  • A Pompeian Herbal: Ancient and Modern Medicinal Plants (1999) ISBN 0-292-74061-1
  • with Frederick G. Meyer (Ed.): The Natural History of Pompeii (2002) ISBN 0-521-80054-4
  • Wild Flowers Amid the Ruins: Greece and Pompeii (2012)

literature

  • Robert Irving Curtis (Ed.): Studia Pompeiana et Classica in Honor of Wilhelmina F. Jashemski (Festschrift, 2 volumes), New Rochelle 1989. ISBN 0892414251

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wilhelmina F. Jashemski Papers , Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries
  2. ↑ madeinpompei (October 2012) .
  3. ^ A b Wilhelmina F. Jashemski: Ancient Roman gardens in Campania and Tunisia: A comparison of the evidence. In: The Journal of Garden History 16, 1996, p. 231, doi: 10.1080 / 01445170.1996.10435649 .
  4. ^ Wilhelmina F. Jashemski: Ancient Roman gardens in Campania and Tunisia: A comparison of the evidence. In: The Journal of Garden History 16, 1996, p. 239, doi: 10.1080 / 01445170.1996.10435649 .
  5. ^ Wilhelmina F. Jashemski: Roman gardens in Tunisia: preliminary excavations in the House of Bacchus and Ariadne and in the East Temple at Thuburbo Maius. In: American Journal of Archeology 99, 1995, pp. 559-575.
personal data
SURNAME Jashemski, Wilhelmina F.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Feemster, Wilhelmina Mary (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Classical Archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 10, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH York , Nebraska
DATE OF DEATH December 24, 2007
Place of death Silver Spring , Maryland