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Article informationAuthor, Jonathan Amos Role, Science Correspondent20 July 2023, 03:49 GMT
Last updated 2 hours ago
A kitchen altar decorated with snakes, a bakery, human skeletons, impressive frescoes and an image of something that looks a lot like pizza are some of the new finds found in the Pompeii Archaeological Park.
Dig anywhere in the ancient city that was destroyed by Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 and you will discover an ancient treasure that offers a glimpse into a lost Roman civilization.
Incredibly, a third of the city, buried under rocks of pumice and ash, has not yet been excavated.
“A lot of that will be the task of future generations,” says archaeologist involved in the new excavations, Alessandro Russo.
“We have a problem preserving what we have already found. Future generations may have new ideas and new technologies.”
The ongoing excavations are centered on a section of the site that was last excavated in the late nineteenth century.
Back then, archaeologists opened the facades of houses on the Via de Nola, one of the main avenues in Pompeii, but they didn’t go far.
They came across a laundromat and stopped by.
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The excavations take place in the summer, when the temperatures are high, and Mount Vesuvius overlooks the site
Excavators are gradually removing the volcanic ash and sand that choked Pompeii during the two disastrous days of Vesuvius’ eruption.
The excavation site was a complete residential area in the city known as Insula, with an area of about three thousand square meters.
BBC News has been awarded exclusive rights to follow the excavation in collaboration with Lion TV, which is preparing a three-part series to be broadcast early next year on BBC channels.
Gennaro Lovino said, “Every room in every house has its own little story within the greater story of Pompeii. I want to uncover those little stories.”
Imagine entering a beautiful atrium, the other archaeologist involved in the excavations, suggests, an entrance hall with an opening in the ceiling, where lion heads direct rainwater into a fountain with a statue at the center of the plinth.
It is evident that the builders were doing some repairs when the volcano erupted because the roof tiles were regularly stacked in piles. This is not a fancy villa like some of the imposing homes found elsewhere in Pompeii.
This building may have been partly commercial because when you turn right you meet an oven big enough to bake a hundred loaves a day.
Almost fifty bakeries have been found in Pompeii. However this cannot be a store because there is no store front.
It is likely that he was a wholesaler distributing bread throughout the city perhaps to the many fast food restaurants for which Pompeii was famous.
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This oven is likely to be commercial, as it used to bake a hundred loaves of bread daily
that “pizza”
The discovery of a mural depicting a round piece of flatbread on a silver tray surrounded by pomegranates, dates, nuts and arbutus caused a sensation when it was announced to the world last June.
It is not pizza because tomatoes and mozzarella cheese, two main ingredients in the classic Neapolitan recipe, were not known to Italy in the first century AD.
Maybe a piece of focaccia? Gennaro Lovino says that the first piece of pizza began as a joke. “I emailed a photo to my boss, saying ‘First the oven, now the pizza.'”
The world went crazy after that.
A cover will be built over a mural to try to protect it from external factors. The board will also be treated with a special substance to protect it from moisture.
The 20,000 daily visitors to Pompeii would demand to see the “grandfather of pizza,” as some now call this fresco.
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The city of Naples, which saw the birth of the pizza as we know it, is not far from Pompeii
It is easy to forget that Pompeii witnessed a human tragedy. We have limited idea of how many died. It is likely that most of the inhabitants left the city when they saw the horror creeping up from the top of Mount Vesuvius.
A number of skeletons have been recovered, possibly a total of 1,300 to 1,500.
During the current excavation the skeletons of two women and a child of unknown gender were found.
Looking at where the bodies of the victims were found, it is clear that they were trying to take cover in the hope that they would be safe when they gathered under the stairs.
What they did not consider was the possibility of the roof collapsing under the weight of gravel and ash. The falling heavy stone blocks shattered their bodies.
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Archaeologists believe that the fire broke out in the house after a lamp fell, as a result of the chaos that accompanied the flight of people from the city.
The burning bed
A chapter from the tragedy that took place in October 79 AD is also revealed across the hall in what was once a bedroom.
The bed itself is a block charred by the fire. It could hardly be recognized were it not for the mark it left on the walls and floor when it burned.
If you look closely at the remains you can see the burnt remains of the bed linen and even the pillow stuffing.
Thanks to the positioning of these charred remains, the archaeologists have been able to conclude that the fire occurred relatively early in the eruption. They speculate that a lighting lamp may have fallen when there was panic as they left the house.
“It would be interesting to know who are the people who didn’t manage to escape,” asks Gabriel Zuchtriegl, director of the site.
“Were they poor? Were there more women than men? Or maybe they were the owners of the house and tried to stay to protect their property while others who had nothing had fled.”
altar
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The altar is located inside the kitchen, where the owners of the house made offerings to the gods, which consisted of foods such as fish and fruits
At the back of the area that has been excavated so far there are walls of three rooms. After removing the pebbles and ashes, amazing works of art emerged.
In the middle room, covered with rain-proof cloth, there is another wonderful mural, which deals with an important event in the myth of Achilles in which the legendary hero Achilles, weak-heeled, tried to disguise himself as a woman to avoid participating in the Trojan War.
In the third room I pulled a piece of cloth to reveal a wonderful altar. On the wall two yellow snakes slithering prominently on a red background. “These are benevolent demons,” says Alessandro Russo.
He points to a mural at the bottom of the wall above the opening of what looks like a kind of box. “This room was actually a kitchen,” he says. “They used to make offerings here to their gods, and it included foods like fish and fruit. The snake is the link between gods and humans.”
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The decorations on the walls are very similar to the wallpaper currently used in decorating homes
As more of the city is revealed metal scaffolding is placed around the remaining buildings for protective roofing. In the future, the park hopes to build a high corridor so that visitors can see the new discovered treasures.
“Sometimes people ask us what are you looking for?” Gabriel Zuchtregell explains. He says such questions are misleading.
“What we’re really looking for is what we don’t know. We’re always looking for surprises. They’re all new clues that lead somewhere but we don’t know where that journey is.”
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2023-07-20 03:52:32
