2023-08-24 09:32:19
Updated Thursday, August 24, 2023 – 09:32
This is clear from the first chemical analysis of the bones of the Pompeii tracings carried out with an innovative technique, X-ray fluorescence.
Bone remains of an inhabitant of Pompeii.CIRO FUSCOEFEItaly Two other bodies are found in Pompeii: they died from the earthquake that accompanied the eruption
The people residing in Pompeii (Italy) died of suffocation after the eruption Vesuvius in the year 79, not burned or dehydrated as other theories defend. This is clear from the first chemical analysis of the bones of the Pompeii tracings -skeletons of its inhabitants in a plaster mold-, carried out with an innovative technique such as X-ray fluorescence.
The work was carried out by an international team led by the University of Valencia and in which researchers from the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) and the Italian Ministry of Culture, and appears published this Wednesday in the magazine ‘PLOS ONE’.
This study is a pioneer in crossing chemical, anthropological, taphonomic and stratigraphic data, and creates a methodology applicable to all traces of the eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79.
During the eruption, the bodies at Pompeii were covered in ash and pyroclastic materials, which were covered by lava and solidified. With their disappearance were left the bones, some fabrics and the hollow of the bodies among the solidified ashes, the so-called voids.
Since 1860, the archaeologist Joseph Fiorelli He put into practice a method to obtain plaster casts of the victims (the calcos), which reconstruct each body to a real scale in the position in which it died.
“This is the first time that a permit has been granted to carry out a chemical analysis of the bones from the Pompeii tracings,” they point out. John Gallellocoordinator of the Archae Chemis Research Unit, and Lloren Alapontboth from the University of Valencia and the first two signatories of the article.
Gallego explains, in statements collected by Servimedia, that the Pompeii tracings describe how some people were left when they died. “We have been able to access with X-ray equipment. An analysis has been carried out directly on the casts and bones. These analyzes have been carried out in non-destructive modes, there has not been any type of sampling and that is important for The conservation of these types of materials will help,” he says.
The researchers analyzed bones contaminated by the plaster and uncontaminated or minimally contaminated bones. “Crossing the anthropological data and the stratigraphy of the volcano, we have also been able to observe that there are important aspects such as that these fugitives who were leaving Pompeii in a second phase of the eruption were already dying of suffocation right at the exit gates of the city, in the Zone of Nola Gate“, aade Gallello-
This researcher points out that “the thermal impact arrived later in a ‘post mortem’ phase, when the volcano also erupted spiroclastic material and burning ash.”
NON-INVASIVE ANALYSIS
Gallello and Alapont point out that this work represents an “extraordinary opportunity that creates the bases for a non-invasive analysis that allows obtaining useful information to identify postdepositional processes around the time of death and ‘post mortem’, and to determine the effect of lime on the bone materials of Pompeii”.
The petrified body of a child found in the ruins of Pompeii.AFP
“In this study we have created a calibration model using reference collections (burnt bones from Pompeii) and other burns from the Ostian Necropolis of Romefrom the same period, and the two groups compared with bones from the the Islamic necropolis of Colata (Montaverner, Valencia). The bones and the lime have been analyzed, and the elemental data have been crossed with those obtained in the tracings”, Gallello highlights.
Specifically, the team worked with the remains of six people in Pompeii who fled in the Porta Nola area and a seventh in the Suburban Baths.
CALCIUM AND PHOSPHORUS
The investigation concludes that the high temperatures to which the bones were subjected occurred ‘post mortem’ with results similar to cremations. “When their bones suffered the effects of high temperatures from pyroclastic waves and magma currents, the victims had already died, probably from inhaling toxic gases,” Alapont points out.
Calcium and phosphorus values, the most representative elements of the bone matrix, have been analyzed in the burned bones of Rome and Pompeii, which were lower than those of the Valencian necropolis of Colata, but with similar proportions of the bone matrix. ratio between the two elements, which makes it possible to rule out contaminated bones and to identify that those in the tracings had suffered a thermal impact.
This information has been completed with the anthropological and taphonomic analysis of the tracings, which makes it possible to relate the position and place of the bodies to the thermal impact, and to confirm that they remained that way ‘post mortem’. “The victims, in their attempt to escape, suffocated very quickly and were also quickly covered in ash,” says Gallello.
The position of the victims, relaxed or stretched out, some of them covering themselves with pieces of clothing, suggests that the ashes and volcanic gases were what caused their death in seconds, not as in the town of Herculaneum, closest to Vesuvius, where its inhabitants were burned by pyroclastic waves of more than 500 degrees.
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