Plaster casts - pompeii
In Pompeii, during the 24 hours of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius ('plinian') in 79 AD. Those that did not flee the city of Pompeii in August of 79 AD were doomed and buried for 1700 years under 30 feet of mud and ash and by the centuries were turned into skeletons, they remained entombed until the excavations in the early 1800s. When archaeolist had found the victims of the 79 AD eruption they had found the bodies still covered in compacted ash. In Pompeii, about 3/4 of Pompeii have been excavated, and some of the 1,150 bodies have been discovered out of an estimated 2,000 people who have thought to have died in the city when it was destroyed. This means that the majority of the city of 20,000 had fled at the first signs of the volcanic activity. The plaster casts of the men, women, children, and animals of Pompeii were primarily made in the mid 1800s.
On August 25th 79 AD, in the early mornings the eruption reached its fatal, concluding stages. A mix of hot gases, pyroclastic flow and ashes from the collapsing eruption column- travelling at 100kph finally reached Pompeii. The eruption of Mt Vesuvius sent a large 'pine tree' of poisonous smoke across the Bay of Napels killing everyone in its path, in early morning it rained ash which fell over Pompeii, covering the city until only the remains of its tallest buildings were visible above the debris. Buried within the ash were the inhabitants of the town. A shell of pumice that allowed them to slowly decayed in the usual way covered those who perished in the early stages of the eruption
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significance
The unique set of bodies found traped in ash created by the eruption was so significant as it allowed archaeologists to bring one hundred of those bodies ‘back to life’ in the form of casts that preserve the body at the moment of their death. One of the most fascinating results of the 79 A.D. eruption of Vesuvius is the large number of holes found in the volcanic deposits around Pompeii that represented the corpses of people and animals that were buried by the hot ash. Early in the excavation it was discovered that filling these molds with plaster produced remarkable casts of the victims of the eruption.