The story of how a ‘new Pompeii’ was built is far less well known than that of the ancient city.
The Vesuvius Challenge incentivizes technological development by inviting researchers to figure out how to ‘read’ ancient papyri excavated from volcanic ash of Mount Vesuvius in Italy. Columns of Greek text retrieved from a portion of a scroll.
(Vesuvius Challenge)
However exciting the technological developments may be, the task of reading and analyzing the Greek and Latin texts recovered from the papyri will fall to human beings.
The atrium of the House of the Vettii, Pompeii.
Courtesy of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii
New technology mapped the buried ancient Roman site of Falerii Novi. Now archaeologists have started targeted excavation and soil testing to reveal details of life from more than 2,000 years ago.
The Fagradalsfjall volcano in Iceland.
Daniel Freyr Jónsson / Alamy Stock Photo
Believed to possess magical qualities, amulets were once widely used. They range from amber pendants worn during Denmark’s Mesolithic age to wind chimes found at Pompeii.
Model of Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, Italy showing the poikilé, the large four-sided portico enclosing a garden with central pool.
Carole Raddato/Wikimedia
Fountains of lava from Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano are dramatic, but the most deadly impacts of volcanic eruptions are toxic gases and ash and mud flows.
A fragment of a wall painting showing two lovers in bed from the House of L Caecilius Jucundus in Pompeii, now at Naples National Archaeological Museum.
Wikimedia Commons
From phallus-shaped wind chimes to explicit erotica on lamps and cups, sex is everywhere in ancient Greek and Roman art. But our interpretations of these images say much about our own culture.
Brothels in Pompeii were decorated with murals depicting erotic and exotic scenes: but the reality was far more brutal and mundane.
Thomas Shahan/Wikimedia Commons
Archaeological and textual detective work is filling in some information about how ancient Romans used and thought about their sewers thousands of years ago.
The recent announcement that European scientists had pioneered a technique for reading papyrus scrolls from Herculaneum without unrolling them attracted widespread attention. At first glance, this might…
Lecturer in Classical Studies, Institute of Classical Studies, University of London; Honorary Fellow, Macquarie University, School of Advanced Study, University of London