Current Archaeology

Visiting Pompeii - Latest Excavations

Latest Excavations

Current World Archaeology Issue 4 is a special issue devoted to Pompeii. In it we describe all the latest digs and discoveries that are going on there, as well as full details of what to see and what to do when you go there yourself! Below is a brief list of all the latest work which is covered in full in the magazine - click here if you wish to purchase the a copy.

First we report new thinking about the eruption itself. The old idea that most people died under a rain of pumice has gone. Now vulcanologists believe most survived the 'air-fall' but were killed by the searing heat of 'pyroclastic ground-surges' during the last and most terrible phase of the eruption.

Then we review Reading University's five-year excavation of the House of Amarantus. Beneath the house destroyed in AD 79 excavators have found evidence for buildings on the same alignment dating from the sixth century BC. So was Pompeii originally an Etruscan new town? They have also found a grand house converted to a seedy bar by the time of the city's destruction - with empty amphorae dumped in a disused garden.

Next we discover that Bradford University, working on the other side of the city, have been digging up one the smartest houses in the city: the House of the Vestals. This elite residence gobbled up neighbouring properties and then piped in water from the new city aqueduct to create a spectacle of gushing fountains set against colonnades and frescoes. Thus we reveal Pompeii's culture of conspicuous consumption under the early emperors.

But is the picture accurate? CWA editor-in-chief Andrew Selkirk challenges the 'greed is good' interpretation of Pompeii and offers an alternative: a city where a wide range of society benefited from the prolonged economic boom in the two centuries before the eruption.

Rick Jones, Bradford's leading Pompeii archaeologist, then brings us up to date on new excavations at the House of the Surgeon, and new international efforts to rescue Pompeii's crumbling remains.

Our next article reveals that Pompeii was threatened by traffic gridlock but for a one-way system enforced by the local council.

Then, from the congestion and noise of the city streets, we first accept an invitation to dinner at the House of the Chaste Lovers, and then get an introduction to interior design and lifestyle choice in the ancient city.