Mount Vesuvius once coated this city in ashes. Now archaeologists are helping Pompeii rise
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In 79 C.E., an ash column with a mushroom top towered over the ancient Roman city of Pompeii as residents scrambled to flee the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
The effects of the eruption were devastating to the area. As one ancient historian, Pliny the Younger, recounted the events to another historian, Cornelius Tacitus, “On Mount Vesuvius sheets of fire and leaping flames blazed at several points, their bright glare emphasized by the darkness of night.”
Modern research suggests the eruption only took 15 minutes to wreak havoc on the city, killing an estimated 2,000 people, per The Guardian. In the aftermath of the catastrophic eruption, it’s believed more people died as they inhaled rain of lapilli.
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The pumice, volcanic debris and ash that fell in a deluge upon the city covered the remaining bodies, buildings, horses, loaves of bread — everything in the city. The city was buried and preserved. It’s a paradox of sorts. The volcano which led to the death of thousands of residents and destroyed the daily lives of survivors also led to the preservation of the city.
Over the course of the last few hundred years, archaeologists have worked to uncover what remains. But a large swath of the city remains unexplored: around a quarter of the city has yet to be excavated, National Geographic reported.
What does the future look like for this ancient city?
Archaeologists are working out what to excavate next. And at the same time, Pompeii is experiencing a boom in tourism. It was a good summer for the city. The number of tourists who visited Pompeii in a single day was record-breaking, per CNN.
The city is different than some other archaeological sites because there are several buildings preserved, not just one. As visitors observe what remains of luxurious private villas, they can creatively imagine what it would have been like to live there in its heyday.
Take the House of the Faun, for example. It’s not so much a house as it is a sprawling palace with colorful mosaics tiled on the floor and homages to ancient Roman gods scattered across the land. The home is full of high ceilings, animal artwork and household objects, providing a clear reminder that once upon a time, someone lived here.
While at Pompeii, you can stroll over to the Villa of Mysteries, which is home to a brightly colored fresco that is stretched across three walls. The fresco features Dionysus (the god of grapes, wine, theater and festivity) alongside his wife Ariadne, fauns and maenads, all engaging in ritualistic activities associated with the worship of Dionysus.
The rites and rituals depicted on the fresco are not entirely understood by scholars. They are part of the mysterious rituals surrounding Dionysus that have remained mysterious through the present day.
These magnificent villas reveal clues about what daily life was like for a portion of ancient Romans. Keep in mind, the residents of these two villas would have had something of a fortune. But other archaeological advancements tell us what daily life would have looked like for most people living in the area.
Between what historians said about daily life and archaeological discoveries, scholars have been able to piece together what it would have been like to live in Pompeii.
Without the buzz of an alarm clock, people relied on the sun rising and setting for their sleeping schedules. There were a number of occupations in ancient Pompeii and Rome, like barbers, farmers, snack shop owners, seamstresses, shop owners and numerous political jobs.
One of the more surprising findings has to with bread.
When historians analyzed the nutrition of people who lived in the area, they didn’t find disparities in nutrition between poorer people and wealthier people.
“Reasons for this have been appointed to the 30 bakeries found in Pompeii, and the 81 carbonised loaves, cooked and ready to be sold, left perfectly preserved in one of the town’s many ovens,” according to tour company Sightseeing Tours Italy’s website. “This suggests that rich and poor alike would have fed on the same bread, explaining their similarities in nutrition.”
Historians analyzed the preserved trash and also discovered that the diets across different economic classes were more similar than what was previously expected. “Evidence of fish bones, chicken, fruit and nuts were found, demonstrating that even normal everyday people ate well,” per the website.
While a fair amount about the city is known, there is still more excavating that archaeologists plan on doing.
“Excavating at Pompeii is a huge responsibility. Excavation is an unrepeatable event,” Gabriel Zuchtriegel, site director of the Pompeii archaeological park, said. “What is excavated remains so forever. It is therefore necessary to devote great care to documenting and analysing each find together with all the stratigraphic relationships and to working out, right from the start, how to safeguard and restore what we find.”
Some of the recent discoveries from excavations have hit the headlines, like the proto-pizza fresco. In the ancient city of Pompeii, archaeologists found a fresco near a bakery depicting a flatbread, similar to a pizza. While the flatbread doesn’t have the “classic ingredients” pizza has, archaeologists at the Unesco World Heritage park told BBC the flatbread “may have been eaten with fruits such as pomegranates or dates, or dressed with spices and a type of pesto sauce.”
Archaeologists also found a kitchen shrine that is decorated with a bunch of serpents, along with a new bakery, according to BBC.
Other discoveries have included decorative bowls, a table, a closet for dishware, a trunk, objects inside bedrooms and kitchens, the remains of a bed frame, an incense burner and a fragment of a plate, The Guardian reported. While these may all seem like small findings, they shed light on what daily life was like for the residents of Pompeii.
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Archaeologists are expected to learn more as they excavate more, but excavating hasn’t been without difficulties.
Archaeologists have been trying to “solve the problems of water seepage between the excavated area and the unexplored area of the ancient city,” per the Pompeii Sites website, as they accommodate tourists and make Pompeii sustainable.
And so now, the archaeological team at Pompeii has found a way to maneuver tourists throughout the area. “Grande Pompei will be a ‘parco diffuso’ or scattered archaeological park, incorporating the archaeological areas of Pompeii itself, as well as villas at nearby Boscoreale, Oplontis (in the modern town of Torre Annunziata) and Stabiae, at modern Castellammare di Stabia,” CNN reported.
Italy’s culture minister, Gennaro Sangiuliano, told media it would be a “scattered museum” that is a “program of sustainable enhancement of the archaeological sites of the (archaeological) park and of the area around it,” per CNN. This means that even though sites used to be ticketed separately, they will bundled together with a shuttled service connecting the sites together.
The future is looking bright for the ancient city, once covered in ashes. What new discoveries will bring is uncertain, but what is known is the preservation of Pompeii has propelled knowledge about the ancient world forward.
