Most of us know the story of Pompeii, the Roman city destroyed but astonishingly preserved by the eruption of the volcano Vesuvius in AD 79. A new study now documents similar astonishing finds resulting from an earlier eruption of Vesuvius in 1780 BC. The damage caused by this eruption was less than in AD 79 because the Bronze Age population of the area was lower, but the eruption covered a larger area than the one that buried Pompeii. The study says this does not bode well for contemporary Italians.Archaeological sites that have been buried and preserved like this are examples of "moments frozen in time" that we archaeologists love and that I have talked about in a number of previous posts. Another report released last week, tells of a similar situation in Indonesia, where an eruption on the island of Sumbawa in 1815 buried and preserved the remains of local villages. "Guided by ground-penetrating radar, U.S. and Indonesian researchers recently dug in a gully where locals had found ceramics and bones. They unearthed the remains of a thatch house, pottery, bronze and the carbonized bones of two people, all in a layer of sediment dating to the eruption." One news report called this the "Pompeii of the East."
There is another example of this - the "New World Pompeii" - that has gotten surprising little popular coverage. The Ceren Site in El Salvador is a Mayan farming hamlet buried and preserved by an eruption in AD 580. Work at this site has been led since the mid-70s by Payson Sheets of the University of Colorado - a member of my thesis committee. Finds from the Ceren Site have given unparalleled insights into the perishable aspects of Mayan material culture - stuff that is never preserved in sites in the humid tropics. It has the only preserved example of a common Mayan house with wattle and daub walls and thatched roof. Carbonized preserved standing corn plants from a field outside of one of the structures allowed for an estimation of the seasonality of the eruption.
This is all very interesting stuff - check out the web site I linked above. Yet I have seen virtually nothing about it in the popular press.
3 comments:
Fascinating. My son, 9 yr old science guy, recently gave me a 2 day lesson on Pompeii. I wonder why it is the most famous? I never heard of any of the other examples you gave here! Maybe because the Pompeiians were wealthy and influential?
As wonderful as excavated ancient sites and fossilized bones can be, I find that the fossils I love the most are the footprints in stone made of ancient dust or mud. Of course, that's anthropocentric, but it's also poetic, suggestive, and luring.
Prairie Mary
Well I'm sure Pompeii is better known because it's big and spectacular and people have been excavating there since the 18th century. It's also been developed as a big tourist attraction. Ceren deserves more notice than it gets however.
I agree Mary that the footprints are interesting. I posted a few weeks ago about some new ones found in Australia. I have just gotten a new book "The Nature of Paleolithic Art" that talks about footprints that have been found and analyzed in some of the classic French cave art sites. They support the author's theory that a significant amount of that art was produced by children and adolescents
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