This was in Der Spiegel yesterday - http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,602458,00.html - a reconstruction of the final hours of life of the victims whose bodies were found in the House of Julius Polybius. The article describes the work of Neapolitans Claudio Scarpati and Marilena Cipollaro. Scarpati studied how the walls collapsed in different phases of the eruption. Using microchrondial DNA, Cipollaro was able to establish that the bodies consisted by three men, one between 25 and 30 years old, and three women between the ages of 16 and 18, four young boys and one girl. Cipollaro claims that the group represent a married couple with their children and a cousin with his young wife and two slaves.
The thing is, I don't think any of this is new ... Wasn't there a BBC programme on exactly this topic a few years ago? I'm sure the whole gist of the programme was to reconstruct the last hours of this particular group of victims. Does anyone know if Scarpati and Cipollaro have published their findings?
A blog for all those who work on Pompeii and the other archaeological sites of the Bay of Naples.
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