Pompeii And Herculaneum Essay

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Pompeii and Herculaneum were two cities located in the Campania region, situated close to Mount Vesuvius. Even though they were buried by the same eruption, they experienced different stages of this eruption. Pompeii being covered mostly by a layer of ash and pumice while Herculaneum received the full force of the first pyroclastic flow (Pompeii was later covered by another pyroclastic flow).
There are obvious differences in the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The eruption covered Pompeii in a layer of ash and pumice whilst Herculaneum was hit with the pyroclastic flow, which after cooling, solidified into solid rock. This solid rock in Herculaneum made it nearly impossible to have an open cut excavation as the technology at the time (1709) was not very capable of doing such, so vertical shafts were …show more content…
Whilst building an aqueduct that involved tunnelling through the hill of Civita he came close to uncovering the amphitheatre, coins and marble were found dating to Nero’s Emperorship but up until 1689 no further excavations were undertaken.
In 1689 there was another accidental discovery of Pompeii while workers were digging in search of water. The workers found the Decurio Pompeiis’ stone that had the word Pompeii inscribed on it. Initially it was thought that the stone referred to Pompey, the Roman general and politician. For this reason the connection to the town of Pompeii was ignored. However, the possibility of a town located under the hill of Civitas was up for debate but most advocates were treated with scepticism.
The slow rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the 17th century was largely accidental and no deliberate excavations were made until 1709 with the discovery of Herculaneum. However, this first excavation was, “…essentially a mining operation to obtain artefacts, mostly sculptures, for the Austrian nobility” Estelle
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