Does it matter if a house at Pompeii falls down?

I am still getting emails, politely (mostly) objecting to what I said in Oxford a few weeks ago -- to the effect that the world wasn't going to stop if a house in Pompeii collapsed. It was when I was having huge fun getting my "Bodley Medal", and it was all accurately reported in the Telegraph. Accurately yes, but the reporting didn't quite capture the context or tone!

I was answering a good question from someone in the audience, asking what I thought about the damage that tourism did to Pompeii, and how we should manage that. The truth is that I have a fairly robust view of this. We do what we reasonably can to preserve the site (and no, we dont condone -- as some people thought I was saying -- any old visitor ripping off what they fancy). But we have to accept that ruins are ruins, and the iron rule is that they will get more ruined, especially when they were destroyed by a volcano in 79 CE and, let's not forget, seriously bombed by the allies in World War II.

One great thing about Pompeii is that one third of it is unexcavated, safe underground; and everyone, so far as I know, is committed to leaving it there for future generations to explore and analyse. The rest is inevitably fragile and we can delay its eventual collapse but not in the end prevent it. In the meantime I think we have to say that it is for us to study, explore, enjoy and share. If we have a responsibility to the past, that's it. And it seems to me that the worst outcome is that we should put a place like Pompeii in aspic and restrict access to the site to a few academics and (no doubt) to some of the privileged rich -- palming the rest of us off with a replica down the road.

There is a bigger point here though. I think it is very easy for us all to lament ruins falling down, or being destroyed (Palmyra is the obvious and tragic example, but there are plenty of others). That's 'news'. But the truth is that some of those who lament the loudest are those who were not the keenest to invest 'tax payers money' into archaeological research at home or abroad.