PLSO May June 2019

From the Editor 3 Vatican City, the Sistine Chapel and the Roman Coliseum. Her demonstrated knowledge of local history through an almost continuous stream of dialogue was critical to giving us a perspective on what we were seeing (most of us for the very first time). Little did our guide real- ize how profoundly I was influenced by a single comment made about the City of Rome in general. It seems that you can’t do any construction without archaeo- logical experts looking over your every move because more than 70 percent of Roman antiquities remain buried under existing buildings! Evidence of ongoing excavations are common, which serves a manifold pur- pose for the residents. Tourism is without question the largest source of revenue for cities like Rome, so their presence is vital to the Italian economy. Consider the fact that more than four million tourists visit the Coliseum annually. Putting that in perspective, that’s about 11,000 per day! It’s almost unimaginable how the city manages to maintain order with that many tourists roaming around so it’s no wonder that you see police everywhere you go, intent on protecting us from al- most certain harm at the hands of every crackpot ideologue with a weapon. This surely has something to do with Italy now imposing daily quotas on the number of visitors allowed at some of the more fa- mous sites as well as requiring each one to pass through metal detectors—some- thing for which I’m very thankful. All these antiquities made me wonder about our own profession and the strides we’ve taken to preserve history for those coming after us. Evidence of surveys here in some cases now date back a bit more than 200 years which seems a paltry amount of time if you embrace an Italian perspective, but there are lessons we can take away from the Italians that could be very important to our successors. Preserv- ing physical boundary evidence, survey and conveyancing records are obviously important, but we mustn’t forget the val- ue of documenting means and methods. While standing there marveling at the evi- dence of skilledmasonry everywhere you turn in the Roman Coliseum, the build- ers remain anonymous and many of the techniques are lost to history. Consider- ing how primitive we consider some of the construction techniques and tools available to the ancient Romans, it’s dif- ficult to argue with the fact that some of their structures have stood for centuries. That’s a pretty remarkable legacy and one that should give us a perspective on how important it is to do quality work with ex- traordinary standards of care. After all, I think we’d like our work to last for more than 2,000 years, wouldn’t we?  x