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More than 20 plaster casts of victims who died when Mount Vesuvius erupted over Pompeii in 79 A.D. went on display for the first time Thursday as part of a new permanent exhibition at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii.
Museum officials described the casts as “imprints of pain,” fashioned to show the position each resident was in at the time of death. The reproductions preserve the position, expression, and clothing details captured in the hardened ash that followed the eruption and subsequent pyroclastic flows, they said.
The technique used to make the casts involves creating a replica from the negative space left behind when bodies decomposed. Curators said the process works by pouring liquid plaster into the voids created in the hardened ash, which then hardens into a three-dimensional image of the victim’s form.
Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, said the purpose of putting the casts on view is to “give dignity to these people who are like us — women, children, men — who died during the eruption.” He added that curators also want visitors “to understand what really happened in Pompeii.”
The method dates to the 19th century. Curators said the approach was invented by Giuseppe Fiorelli in 1863 and continues to be used by the team of scholars conducting research at Pompeii.
Officials said Pompeii is the only known site where archaeologists can recover this type of evidence, allowing visitors to see reproductions of objects and people that were destroyed in the eruption. They said excavations have recovered remains of more than a thousand victims across Pompeii, with corpses found trapped in homes and shelters, buried by pumice and volcanic rock, or killed by the collapse of roofs and walls under the weight of volcanic debris.
In selecting the 22 casts for the new exhibition, curators said they chose among the best preserved remains and assembled examples found throughout the city, from inner areas to the gates and roads leading out as residents fled in search of safety.
Silvia Martina Bertesago, an archaeologist at the Pompeii Archaeological Park, said the casts can move visitors emotionally. She said, “They have a strong emotional impact on visitors and can be very moving,” and she added that “Through the analyses we can carry out today with increasingly advanced techniques, we can also understand their age and sex, but also whether they had particular diseases or particular types of diet.”
The exhibition is housed in the porticoes of the Palestra Grande, opposite the Amphitheatre. Alongside an area dedicated to human remains, officials said it also includes displays of findings such as plants and food that remained buried for centuries under meters of ash and lava.