Thursday 19 November

10 AM PST
1 PM EST
6 PM GMT
7 PM CET

With Dr. Eireann Marshall

The catastrophic eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79 spelled the end of a number of delightful cities in the Bay of Naples which were well known to the inhabitants of Rome for their beauty and for the goods they produced. The destruction of these cities, their rediscovery in the end of the 16^th century and their excavations starting from the 18^th century were at forefront of the development of archaeology and at shaping what we know about the Roman world. The evidence provided by the burial of the Vesuvian towns is uniquely important for understanding of the everyday life in antiquity and is constantly being re-evaluated.

The establishment of the Great Pompeii Project in recent years has yielded exciting new discoveries and has made us think again about long held beliefs, including the date of the eruption and the final moments of the victims’ lives. This lecture explores the nature of the eruption, using not only Pliny’s famous letters but the recent analyses of the skeletal remains. We will also be examining the exciting discoveries made in recent years.