Additional photos of ancient Pompeii

A Roman painting on a building wall within the extraordinary ruins

Mount Vesuvius erupting

Columns in Pompeii

http://geology.com/volcanoes/vesuvius/

The Anglo-American Project in Pompeii (AAPP)

The AAPP is run by the University of Bradford in Britain. They train future archaeologists in a field school environment. They have project in Pompeii where they are no longer cleaning new areas of the debris but where they are looking into areas that have already been exposed in order to preserve and record what is there. They work in collaboration with the Italian archaeological authorities and the Soprintendenza-Archeologica di Pompei. These students are using new technology to be able to gain insights into what life was like in Pompeii prior to its destruction by Mount Vesuvius.

Part of this groups goal is to preserve the ancient city so that many others can visit and learn more about the ancient city of Pompeii. By preserving what they are able to uncover, it will give people a better understanding of what happened in A.D.79 as they are able to see the ruins in their natural place of being.

http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/pompeii/preservation.html

Time line of the burial of Pompeii

August 24, A.D. 79-
1:00 pm- The first signs of smoke coming out of Mount Vesuvius were spotted reaching 9 miles into the sky. People knew that it was time for them to leave their homes when the ash began to fall on their roofs. Many of the people gathered up all the belongings that they could and went out into the streets. Some of the people tried to escape on boats through the sea and others waited on the beach.
Midnight- The people that were on the beach would have had a perfect place to watch the lava spill down the sides of Vesuvius but they would have quickly been over taken by the ash, heat and burning embers that were spilling out of Vesuvius so they would not have seen much.

August 25, A.D. 79
1:00 am-Clouds of gasses and ash continued to spill down Vesuvius onto the city of Pompeii. The anthropologist Paolo Petrone and the vulcanologist Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo were able to use the bone fractures and the position the remains were found in to know that the people were in a 900 degree Fahrenheit cloud that caused them to die within seconds.

7:00 am- the final cloud bust down and killed the remaining people of Pompeii.

8:00 am-Pompeii was silent.

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/pompeii/history/history_03.html

A personal account of the day of destruction

Recent findings have given clues to the last hours that Lupercus lived during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that buried the city of Pompeii. Lupercus was only identified by the bronze seal that he carried with him that night that declared him to be an imperial slave. As Lupercus thought that he would be safe from the heat and mud spewing out of Vesuvius as he was on the beach, near the water, along with many other citizens of Pompeii. He watched as Vesuvius continued to send out ash, rocks, burning bits and mud and thought that it was going to be a long night and he would have a lot to do when it was over to get the gardens at the villa that belonged to the emperor Caligula. Some of the people on the beach decided to find shelter in the boat houses and others decided to rest on the beach while watching Vesuvius. Lupercus went into the shelter that was for the men. Inside the shelter he saw the doctor with his bag of medical supplies and a soldier that was in full gear. They had nothing to do but wait. The men sat together and talked late into the night. A bolt of heat, similar to lightening, struck and all the men were gone in a tangle of bodies. There was a young couple that Lupercus had observed across the water that were laying on the beach with the man's arm around the woman. They were solidified on the beach in this way.

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/pompeii/history/history_04.html

People and city of Pompeii

Pompeii was a wealthy Roman city known for its lavish homes and for its fish sauce. The homes of Pompeii were heated by hot air that ran through the walls an floors and had water brought into the homes through hydraulic pumps. The people of Pompeii put a lot of money into their homes. Building outdoor courtyards and gardens and filling the walls with frescoes of plants and flowers. The people had many modern conveniences in their homes. Pompeii was said to be international and cosmopolitan.
The people of Pompeii numbered approximately 20,000, half of whom were children. Women stood about 4.5 feet tall at adulthood and lived to the age of 39 whereas the men were a few inches taller and lived to an average of 41 years old.

The destruction of Pompeii

It was a summer day in A.D. 79. It was just about noon time when a loud roar was heard throughout the city of Pompeii. Upon looking out, I saw that Mount Vesuvius was belching out a huge cloud of smoke as fire spewed upwards. Very soon after, a darkness came over the city. It was darker than any night that I had seen. Burning rocks, pumice and stones were raining down from the skies. It was a scary time to be in Pompeii. The sounds of all the screaming and frightened people that had not been as lucky as I was to find shelter continued to ring in my ears. I must have finally fallen asleep from pure exhaustion as the next I knew it was 7am. I no longer heard the screams of people but instead the screaming of the winds that were carrying ash, poisonous vapors and very hot temperatures through the streets of Pompeii.
http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/pompeii/history/history_07.html