Jennifer Trimble is helping rebuild the streets of ancient Rome.
The archeologist, who lectures at the Bainbridge library Nov. 24, is using digital imaging to assemble the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle comprising 1,186 fragments of the Forma Urbis Romae, a huge marble map of Imperial Rome carved in the third century CE.
“As a child, I liked puzzles,” Trimble said, “although I’d have to say that this one is the most difficult one I’ve done. ”
The 60-by-43-foot raised map, originally composed of 150 marble slabs four stories high, has deep incisions that researchers believe closely duplicate the layout of Rome.
“The detail is amazing,” Trimble said. “The map shows every street, alley and courtyard. You can see ground-floor rooms, and even internal staircases.”
The Roman carvers used single lines to depict building walls and dots to indicate colonnades on the map, which was originally affixed to an inner wall of the Forum building, where records of land ownership were kept. Arcades are dashes and doorways are a break in the line. Temple walls were inscribed and filled with red paint, presumably for emphasis.
Today, Trimble says, the Forma Urbis Romae – also known as the Severan Plan – offers valuable information about every aspect of the city’s social, commercial and religious life, from the commerce of the far-flung empire, conducted along the major thoroughfares, to the brothels of back alleys.
“The Plan also tells us about the ancient Roman idea of the city,” Trimble said, “the ideologies of representation and mapping and surveying. The more we know about the marble Plan, the more we know about imperial Rome.”
Work ethic
The daughter of opera singer Michael Trimble, now a Bainbridge resident, Trimble says that living abroad with her professional pianist mother and her journalist stepfather made for a peripatetic childhood.
She attended schools in France and Austria where, she says, the rigor of the European education and the example of her high-achieving family imbued her with a powerful work ethic.
Trimble studied English as an undergraduate at Bryn Mawr College (1986), then earned a masters degree in Classical Art and Archeology from Harvard University (1994). She followed these with dual degrees – a doctorate in Classical Art and Archeology and a masters in Latin – from University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (1999).
Just after she arrived at Stanford to take up her first university post as Assistant Professor of Classics, Trimble was approached about the Forma Urbis Romae project by Mark Levoy, a computer scientist.
While working on a project to scan Michelangelo’s “David,” Levoy met the director of the Museum of Roman Civilization (Museo della Civilta Romana) where the fragments are housed, and realized the potential for reassembling the images using digital technology.
For Trimble, the timing of the project was fortuitous, she says; as a young professor, she was eager to immerse herself in a consuming project.
The archeologist knew that the marriage of her field with computer science offered new potential for understanding the past.
Cutting edge
According to Trimble, Levoy and his colleagues use several methods to match the Plan pieces.
They may line up the incisions that indicate where the buildings and streets were; look for the pattern of clamp holes that show where the pieces were affixed to the walls, or they may use algorithms.
“It’s not just ‘visual thinking,’” Trimble said. “It’s cutting edge. We believe that the best hope for piecing the map together lies in using computer shape-matching algorithms to search for matches among the fractured side-surface of the fragments.”
While the digital images may not convey information about surface patinas and erosion, in some ways the two-dimensional images are better, Trimble says.
As an example, she cites how the scientists may delete corrosion from surfaces, to simplify the image and make matching easier.
The full release of the database of all the fragments in planned for 2003.
“We hope that people will take the ball and run with it,” Trimble said. “It’s an incredible monument, with enormous possibilities for interpretation and study.”
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The Bainbridge Library’s Speakers Forum continues with Jennifer Trimble, specialist in the art and archeology of the Roman Empire, speaking on “Reconstructing Imperial Rome: Stanford’s Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project,” at 4 p.m. Nov. 24 at the library. Tickets are $12 at the door. For more information, contact the library at 842-4162.
