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The north slope of Mount Vesuvius has largely been ignored archaeologically compared to its other sides, where the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were once located. Recent work there has shown that it was no less important than these other sites during the Roman era. Having reached his mid-seventies, Rome's first emperor, Caesar Augustus, lived out his final days in a villa near the base of Mount Vesuvius. While traveling in the Bay of Naples, he fell ill and detoured to the ancestral home of his biological father's family, the Octavii, near the city of Nola. In A.D. 14, at...

Archaeologists in Pompeii recently unearthed the well-preserved remains of two people believed to have died in an earthquake that accompanied the infamous volcanic eruption there almost 1,500 years ago.The two male skeletons were found beneath a collapsed wall in the Casti Amanti, or House of Chaste Lovers, the site said in a statement Tuesday.Evidence suggests the wall that trapped both men crumbled during an earthquake that shook the area as Mount Vesuvius buried the Roman city under volcanic material in October 79 AD.Around 20% of the city’s population perished in the catastrophic Italian eruption, the site stated. The Casti Amanti...

An ancient Nabataean temple with marble altars has been found in the gulf of Pozzuoli outside Naples in the Italian region of Campania. A statement from the Italian ministry of culture says: "The two marble altars of the Roman period, datable to the first half of the first century AD, are inserted inside the great Temple of the Nabataeans, now submerged." It is unclear when or if the ancient ruins will be removed from the seabed.The Nabataean population was based in the desert areas of the Arabian Peninsula. Around 2,000 years ago they established a settlement at Pozzuoli, building up...

Baiae is an archaeological park consisting of a partially sunken town from the Roman period, located on the shore of the Gulf of Naples in the present-day comune of Bacoli in Italy.Baiae developed into a popular Roman resort which was visited frequently by many notable Roman figures, such as Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus..., Julius Caesar, Gaius Marius, Lucius Licinius Lucullus, Hadrian, and Septimius Severus.The town would never attain a municipal status, but instead gained a reputation for a hedonistic lifestyle. This is supported by an account by Sextus Propertius, a poet of the Augustan age during the 1st century BC, who...

...a team of researchers, led by Dr. Allison Emmerson of Tulane University, is exploring Insula 14, a block in the southeastern part of the city that could reveal new information about Pompeii's early existence, how the city developed over time, its economy and infrastructure, and the lives of residents who lived on the margins. The project, called Pompeii I.14, includes a digital data initiatives team that is employing geospatial technology to more efficiently and accurately collect, organize, analyze, visualize, and share the data that's being unearthed at the site. ArcGIS Survey123, ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Dashboards, and web scenes in ArcGIS...

A 2,300-year-old drainage system carved into bedrock beneath Pompeii will be used again to divert increasing rainwater into the sea.Mount Vesuvius on the west coast of Italy is the only active volcano in continental Europe and its eruption in the year AD 79 buried the city of Pompeii under thousands of tons of hot ashes and rocks. Seconds after the eruption the southern Italian town was engulfed in a 500°C "pyroclastic heat surge," when fast-moving currents of hot gases and volcanic matter (tephra) killed every one of the approximately 30,000 inhabitants, instantly.This 170-acre archaeological site is mostly preserved within ash,...

An ornate courtyard found in an otherwise humble home may have reflected the owners' aspirational vision of the future.Discoveries in Pompeii—from elaborate frescoes to garden shrines—have taught researchers a lot about the city's wealthiest residents. Until recent years, however, the lives of the lower and middle classes have garnered less interest.But now, archaeologists have excavated several rooms in a middle-class home partially destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E. Frozen in time, the rooms provide a snapshot into the lives of everyday people in the ancient Roman city, according to a statement from the Archaeological Park of...

The man, who has not been named, allegedly walked on an unauthorized path to reach the summit of Mount Vesuvius at 1,281 meters, according to a spokesperson from the Carabinieri of the Forestry department of the Park of Vesuvius. The spokesperson told ABC News he believes the man went on the unmarked path because tickets for visiting Vesuvius, which cost $2,500 per day, were all booked. The guides immediately started moving toward the area and were able to come to the man's rescue after seeing him attempt to retrieve his cellphone, according to Carabinieri's spokesperson. The guides also performed first...

Hear from experts about the challenges of unraveling and reading hundreds of carbonized papyri scrolls buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79. Classicists David Blank of the University of California Los Angeles and Richard Janko of the University of Michigan discuss early and current attempts to open the fragile layers and decipher their texts, and computer scientist W. Brent Seales of the University of Kentucky shares how advances in technology and machine learning might allow the still unopened ancient book rolls to be "virtually unwrapped" and read. October 19, 2019, The Getty Villa, Malibu, California.Reading the Herculaneum...

Scientists have successfully sequenced human genome from an individual who died in Pompeii, Italy, after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.The researchers examined the remains of two individuals who were found in the House of the Craftsman in Pompeii and extracted their DNA. The shape, structure, and length of the skeletons indicated that one set of remains belonged to a male who was aged between 35 to 40 years at the time of his death, while the other set of remains belonged to a female aged over 50 years old.Although the authors were able to extract and sequence...

In the 19th century, the archaeologists tasked with excavating Pompeii and Herculaneum ran into a problem: Everywhere they turned, they found erotic art, from frescoes of copulating couples to sculptures of nude, well-endowed gods.At a time when sex was widely considered shameful or even obscene, officials deemed the images too explicit for the general public. Instead of placing the artifacts on view, staff at the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli stashed them in a secret room closed to all but scholars and, according to Atlas Obscura, male visitors willing to bribe their way in. Between 1849 and 2000, the works...

Archaeologists recreated a Pompeiian villa destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E. using virtual reality technology to better understand how visitors would have seen the ancient home, according to the recently published paper in the archaeology journal Antiquity. The researchers carefully created a digital model of the ancient home known as the House of the Epigrams, a villa excavated in the 1870s and so named because it contains mythical paintings accompanied by Greek epigrams. While the owner of the house is impossible to know for sure, researchers have suggested it may have belonged to a Lucius Valerius...

Scientists studying ice cores packing in some 60,000 years of history have found signs of thousands of volcanic eruptions across that time, stretching back to the last Ice Age – with 25 of the eruptions larger than anything Earth has seen in the last 2,500 years. Researchers excavated the cores near both poles: in Antarctica (where 737 eruptions were logged) and Greenland (where 1,113 eruptions were found). A total of 85 eruptions were large enough to leave evidence behind at both poles. That evidence takes the form of sulfuric acid deposits left behind by the eruptions. It gives researchers clues...

In Italy, the supervolcano known as Campi Flegrei to the west of Naples is at a yellow alert level as it is undergoing heightened levels of unrest. Hundreds of earthquakes are occurring every month, but more importantly a dangerous threshold is about to be reached. If ground uplift continues at its present rate, it will surpass the level reached in 1984 which led to the evacuation of 40,000 residents. This video will describe what is occurring at this volcano and why an evacuation might be needed later in the year.0:00 Campi Flegrei Unrest0:25 Signs of Unrest1:10 A Dangerous Threshold1:25 Previous...

...A century later, the Italian military historian Flavio Russo suggested that the attribution should be settled by scientific investigation. Might an isotopic examination of the teeth reveal where the skull’s owner had spent his childhood? A campaign led by La Stampa eventually raised funds for a study of the relic at the hands of a scientific team fronted by popular historian Andrea Cionci. The results, released in January 2020 at the Museo dell’ Arte Sanitaria, were somewhat ambiguous. Isotopic examination of the lower jaw indicated a childhood consistent with the early life spent by the Elder Pliny in his north...

Archaeologists excavating the Roman coastal retreat of Herculaneum have unearthed the remains of a victim from the Vesuvius eruption in AD 79... During the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, the town was buried under thick layers of ash and pumice, followed by pyroclastic material that carbonised organic remains...Previous excavations in the 1980’s of the towns shoreline discovered skeletons on the beach and in the first six so-called boat sheds. Archaeologists at the time suggested that these victims were waiting for rescue, when they were killed instantly from the heat generated by a pyroclastic flow att temperatures of around 500 °C.For the...

The little slave room contains three beds, a ceramic pot and a wooden chest.Pompeii archaeologists said Saturday they have unearthed the remains of a "slave room" in an exceptionally rare find at a Roman villa destroyed by Mount Vesuvius' eruption nearly 2,000 years ago.The little room with three beds, a ceramic pot and a wooden chest was discovered during a dig at the Villa of Civita Giuliana, a suburban villa just a few hundred metres from the rest of the ancient city.An almost intact ornate Roman chariot was discovered here at the start of this year, and archaeologists said...

The catastrophic impact of Vesuvius effectively froze the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in time, like insects trapped in amber. This has provided archaeologists with unique insights into the lives of those living in the shadow of the volcano thousands of years ago. The opportunity to actually walk around an ancient city, almost as it was, allows us to connect with our past in tangible ways.The scientific study of the remains of victims of Vesuvius are, however, not without controversy. Until very recently, the prevailing theory was that the heat and force of the pyroclastic flow pouring out of Vesuvius...

Excavators have discovered a large four-wheel ceremonial chariot at a villa near Pompeii, an ancient city in southern Italy. Excavators found the bronze and tin chariot almost fully intact, with wooden remains and the imprint of ropes, according to an announcement on Saturday from the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. "It is an extraordinary discovery for the advancement of our knowledge of the ancient world," said the outgoing director of the park, Massimo Osanna. "At Pompeii vehicles used for transport have been found in the past, such as that of the House of Menander, or the two chariots discovered at Villa...

A stunning fresco in the garden of Pompeii's Casa dei Ceii (House of the Ceii) has been painstakingly laser-cleaned and touched up with new paint by expert restorers. The artwork — of hunting scenes — was painted in the so-called 'Third' or 'Ornate' Pompeii style, which was popular around 20–10 BC and featured vibrant colours. Poor maintenance since the house was dug up in 1913–14 saw the hunting fresco and others deteriorate, particularly at the bottom, which is more vulnerable to humidity. The main section of the fresco depicts a lion pursuing a bull, a leopard pouncing on sheep and...