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By Newsweek Editors
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THE VOLCANIC ASH THAT Devastated Pompeii in A.D. 79 also saved it from time's ravages. Now modern man seems to be finishing what Mount Vesuvius began: ruining the ancient city for good. Although progress has been made cleaning up sloppily excavated sites, Pompeii's ruins remain poorly protected. Guards have been known to sleep on duty while visitors deface walls with graffiti. This month, vandals lopped off the heads of ""the fugitives,'' a family group found in 1991. Little of the gate receipts from the site's 2 million annual visitors go to preservation efforts. Now, most scholars want to see excavation stopped to prevent further deterioration. Archeological apostasy, says Antonio de Simone, an archeologist at the Villa of Papyri site nearby: ""The whole point of a dig is to dig.'' A proposed solution would distribute the city in blocks to different universities, to complete and record earlier work. Then, many scholars favor reburying sections of Pompeii. After all, for almost two millenniums, dirt did a better job of protecting the site than modern-day caretakers.
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