this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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Archaeology

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Archaeology or archeology[a] is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes.

Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time.

The discipline involves surveying, excavation, and eventually analysis of data collected, to learn more about the past. In broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Read more...

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36
Archaeologists Uncover Two Nearly Life-Size Statues Carved Into the Wall of a Tomb in Ancient Pompeii (www.smithsonianmag.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by Alabaster_Mango to c/[email protected]
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[–] Alabaster_Mango 5 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

I feel like "nearly life-sized" means they were scaled down, and not just short. They don't have the remains, but they know the average heights of people from the same time and place.

Also, per Wikipedia:

... relief carving is a type in which figures or patterns are carved in a flat panel of wood... The figures project only slightly from the background rather than standing freely

Based on these being slightly more three dimensional, I probably would also have called them statues. I am not an archeologist though, so you may be on to something.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

If someone made a table and said it was “nearly life-size,” every rational person would say, “So, a smaller table then?” No human is the same size, even within tightly-controlled groups.

If there’s a noticeable difference in scale it’s not “nearly” life-size then.

And the Wikipedia article you reference is about woodcarving. Try this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_relief

There are pictures of what look like statues, but they are considered reliefs because they were carved out of the unmoved rock, rather than built out of displaced stones as a statue would be.

Guys, don’t be in such a rush to defend bad grammar. AI or human, it’s poorly written.

[–] Alabaster_Mango 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

Saying "short people" is waaaaay different than "nearly life-sized". There is more to size than height. Proportions matter too. Shorter people aren't also narrower, for example. It makes sense to me, but if they said they found statues of short people I wouldn't get the same vibe.

I agree that people aren't all the same height, but there are averages to go off. That's why things like chairs and doorways work for most people.

The more I look at the photos the more I think they are indeed statues. There is a big ol' void beneath the dude that suggests he's standing on dirt, and not carved from a stone that was originally there. They also seem to be two different statues that were placed side by side. You can see a seam in between them. I suspect that they were carved separately, but with the "wall" structures around them with the intent to be put in an alcove or something.

At the end of the day though, this is all kind of petty and overly semantic. I don't think this was written by AI, ~~and you do~~ but you have doubts. A sample size of 2 isn't all that great. I just wanted to share some neat stone carving things that were found in Pompeii, not debate about the grammar of the article.

Edit: Changed some needlessly accusatory language.

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