2023-08-23 20:00:10
During the eruption in pompeii the bodies were covered in ash and pyroclastic materialswhich were covered by lava and they solidified. With the disappearance of the bodies, the bones, some fabrics and the hollow of the bodies among the solidified ashes, the empty calls. Since 1860, the archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli put into practice a method to obtain plaster molds of the victims (the shims), which reconstruct real scale every body in the position in which he died.
“This is the first time that a permit has been granted to carry out a chemical analysis of bones of the calques of Pompeii”, stand out John Gallelloresearch unit coordinator ArkaeChemisy Llorenç Alapontboth experts from the University of Valencia and the first two signatories of the article, who describe this analysis as an “extraordinary opportunity that creates the bases for a non-invasive analysis that allows us to obtain useful information to identify postdepositional processes around the time of death and post mortemand determine the lime effect in the bone materials of Pompeii”.
The high temperatures to which the bones were subjected occurred postmortem with similar results to cremations.
“In this study we have created a calibration model using reference collections (burnt bones from Pompeii), and other burnt ones from the Ostian necropolis in Rome from the same period, and the two groups compared with bones from 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 has worked with the remains of six people in Pompeii who fled in the Porta Nola area and a seventh in the Suburban Hot Springs.
The investigation concludes that the high temperatures to which the bones were subjected produced postmortem with results similar to those cremations.
“When his bones suffered the effects of the high temperatures caused by the pyroclastic waves and the magma currentsthe victims they had already passed awayprobably because of inhalation of toxic gases”, emphasizes Llorenç Alapont.
The researcher highlights x-ray fluorescence as a non-invasive and portable technique that has made it possible to select bones not contaminated by lime and to identify those subject to thermal shock, which in a favorable case would eliminate them for some types of analyses, especially genetic or isotope.
In the burned bones of Rome and Pompeii, the values of calcium and phosphorus, the most representative elements of the matrix of the bones, have been analyzed, which were lower than those of the bones of the Valencian necropolis of Colata, but with proportions of the ratio between the two similar elements, which allows discard contaminated bones and identify that the bones of the tracings had suffered a thermal shock.
The victims, in their attempt to escape, suffocated very quickly and were also quickly covered in ash.
Gianni Gallello, principal author
This information has been completed with the anthropological analysis y taphonomic of the tracings, which allows relating the position and place of the bodies with the thermal impact, and confirming that they remained so post mortem.
“The victims, in their attempt to escape, they suffocated very quickly and they were also quickly covered in ash”, says Gianni 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 They were the ones that caused his death in seconds, not like in the town of Herculaneum, closest to Vesuvius, where its inhabitants were burned by pyroclastic waves of over 500 degrees.
The research involved Massimo Osanna, professor of Archeology at the University of Naples, director of the Pompeii Archaeological Park between 2014 and 2021, and currently general director of the Italian state museums; Marcos Martinón Torres, professor at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge, and S. Chenery, from the British Geological Survey. This research is part of the project ‘The archeology of death in Pompeii’, directed by Llorenç Alapont.
Reference:
Alapont, Ll. et al. “The Casts of Pompeii: post-depositional methodological insights”. PLoS One (2023)
Rights: Creative Commons.
#chemical #analysis #Pompeii #tracings #confirms #deaths #suffocation