In the vaults down by the seashore, the bodies of the last inhabitants were found in their hundreds, crowded by the dozen into each space. There they took refuge from a catastrophe that they hoped they might survive, one in the form of a tremendous earthquake, only to find themselves overwhelmed by the catastrophe they had never imagined, a pyroclastic surge that reduced their bodies to skeletons in a matter of seconds, if not fractions of a second. When someone dies of thermal shock, their tendons involuntarily contract into the â€~pugilistâ€TM position of a boxer in self-defence. The sight is familiar in the victims of catastrophic fires and bomb explosions. But so swift was their death that the process of involuntary contraction was noteven complete before they died. What is left, after careful excavation, is a shocking sight. One can only look with dismay at the remains of fellow humans so instantaneously snuffed out. The effect of the intense heat is to deprive the skeletons of their humanity, of all the elements that enable us to recognize someone, to â€~put a face to themâ€TM. Yet the paradox is that this state of frightening anonymity is, after all, legible.Advances in forensic science and palaeo-osteology, the science of study of the bones of the past, mean that each skeleton can be carefully individuated, by gender, age, medical history and (to some extent) social condition. Much, as we will see, can be said about these victims. Yet nothing will restore their names. We do indeed have names of the inhabitants, in great abundance. Inscriptions and dedications allow us to reconstruct much about the townâ€TMs ruling elite, over at least a century. The largest and most important inscription preserved in Herculaneum gives us more than this: the names of up to 500 inhabitants, all male and of free status. Even more precious, we have dossiers of wooden tablets, archives from no less than eight of the houses, totalling some 160 separate documents. These not only illustrate vividly the life histories of a select group of inhabitants, but, thanks to the Roman insistence of having every legal documentwitnessed by at least seven people, provide hundreds of names from the last two decades of the townâ€TMs life, as many as 650 separate individuals. Itis rare, anywhere in the Roman world, to have the evidence of hundreds of contemporary skeletons, or to know hundreds of contemporary names, let alone to have both such sources of information. But that is not of course all. We have a good proportion of their houses too, the residences, shops and flats in which they lived. And in one extraordinary case, which we will look at in detail, we have, thanks to the great sewer or cesspit that ran under the block of shops and flats by the Palaestra, the organic remains that enable us to analyse in detail the diet of several dozen inhabitants over the course of a couple of decades. And indeed, if more was needed, we actually can put faces to a few dozen of the more wealthy inhabitants, thanks to their fondness for portraits in marble and bronze. It is hard to imagine any other ancient population that can be known in such close-grained detail. Excerpted from Herculaneum: Past and Future by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
