Herculaneum is an ancient town located close to Naples, Italy, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. It is an UNESCO World Heritage Site, and one of the few that still remains close to its original grandeur. The first excavation started in the 18th century, and it has been sporadically excavated ever since.
When the volcano Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE, pyroclastic surges (toxic clouds of gas and rock) rolled down the mountain, and completely buried Herculaneum. The pyroclastic material covered, and preserved, organic objects such as wood, food, plants and skeletons. Where the pyroclastic flow did not reach, smoke and ash covered the area. The more famous city of Pompeii was buried in this ash which had the opposite effect to the pyroclastic flow; no organic material survived. Herculaneum and Pompeii are essentially two sides of the same coin: same disaster, opposite preservations.
The stone boathouses, found close to the ancient shoreline to the south of the site, were found during an excavation in 1981 along with 55 skeletons on the beach and in the first six out of the twelve boathouses. This was a new discovery that completely changed the previous theory about the evacuation of the town. Because the previous excavations had revealed only a handful of skeletons, the theory was that most inhabitants managed to escape the catastrophe. However, further excavation in the 1990’s ended up revealing some 350 skeletons in the boathouses. How these unlucky people who were most likely waiting to be evacuated died are a topic of debate among researchers.
How did these unlucky souls die?
Determining how they died is certainly a difficult task because it happened nearly two thousand years ago, and we only have the skeletons left today. It is likely to be a combination of factors, with different people dying from different complications, depending on their own health, what they were exposed to, and how much shelter they had. One common theory is that they died from suffocation either from the ash or from a combination of the ash and the heat destroying their airways. Some may have been exposed to heat so intense from the pyroclastic flow that it could have killed them instantly. We know that it is possible to die from heat stroke within only a couple of hours, and considering the temperatures some of these people were subjected to was much higher, it’s no surprise they would die from the heat. In a study published in the scientific journal Antiquity two main bone features from Herculaneum were studied: the presence of the protein collagen, which disappears when heated up, and the crystal structure in bone, the calcium mineral hydroxyapatite, which did not change in the way it is expected to when it is exposed to extreme heat. These two findings together indicate that the soft tissue of these individuals did not vanish instantly (which means it is unlikely any of them were vaporised). The hottest pyroclastic surge would have taken time to penetrate the boat houses walls and then after the heat got through the buildings, it had to penetrate the muscles and soft tissue of the unlucky people hiding inside.
We do however have some accounts from the time and the event itself. As luck would have it, there was even a famous author among the dead: Pliny the Elder. Known for his work as a Roman author, natural philosopher, as well as a military commander; Pliny the Elder sailed to Herculaneum during the crisis in order to help the evacuation. His nephew, Pliny the Younger later wrote about it based on first hand accounts of the people who were with the Elder. While sleeping at night, the ash and pumice falling from the volcano was threatening to trap them all in their houses, so Pliny the Elder with his friends and slaves left to try to escape by sea. As they reached the shore, Pliny the Elder succumbed to the toxic fumes and suffocated to death. His friends were able to flee, and returned some days later to find his body still intact and uninjured as if he were sleeping.
Because all of the remains are skeletons today, it is impossible to tell exactly what killed each of them. We do know it was a combination of factors with different people dying at different times from different complications. But we can still imagine the horror and the fear as the mountain spewed fire and rock slowly burying everything. As people tried to flee, some would suddenly drop dead either from the heat, or the toxic gases. Others would seek shelter and simply die more slowly. This must have been a horrible and terrifying way to die.
Text: MENAM Archaeology. Copyright 2022.
Image: Anna Sunneborn Gudnadottir.
Further reading:
Guidobaldi, M.P. and Esposito, D. (2013). Herculaneum: Art of the Buried City. U.S.A, Abbeville Press, (p.21-26).
Martyn, R., Craig, O., Ellingham, S., Islam, M., Fattore, L., Sperduti, A., Bondioli, L. and Thompson, T., 2020. A re-evaluation of manner of death at Roman Herculaneum following the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius. Antiquity, 94(373), pp.76-91.
Pliny the Younger. Letters “VI.16 To Tacitus”
Schmidt, Christopher & Oakley, Elizabeth & D'Anastasio, Ruggero & Brower, Rebecca & Remy, Ashley & Viciano, Joan. (2015). Herculaneum. In: Schmidt CW, Symes SA (eds.) The analysis of burned human remains, 2nd edition. Academic Press. pp. 149-161, 2015.
Thompson, T.J.U. 2015. The analysis of heat-induced crystallinity change in bone, in Schmidt, C. & Symes, S. (ed.) The analysis of burned human remains: 323–37. Cambridge (MA): Academic.
Images:
Herculaneum. Anna Sunneborn Gudnadottir.
The boat houses. Wikimedia Commons..
The skeletons in the boat houses. Anna Sunneborn Gudnadottir.
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