A month ago, archaeologists at Pompeii announced the discovery of a new skeleton of a victim of Mt. Vesuvius whose legs and torso were sticking out from under an enormous stone block. The skeleton spawned numerous memes, comparisons to Wile E. Coyote, and blowback from researchers who saw both of these things as unethically mocking death.
Just minutes ago, the Pompeii Archaeological Park posted to their Facebook and Instagram feeds new photos of this unfortunate man: his skull. It’s totally intact, which means his upper half was not crushed by the block after all. They write (in Italian; translations mine) that:
“In the first phase of excavation, it seemed that the upper portion of the thorax and the skull, not yet identified, had been sheared and dragged downwards by a block of stone that had crushed the victim: this preliminary hypothesis arose from the position of the stone with respect to the impression of the body in the ash.”
Upon further excavation, however, the archaeologists recovered the skull, which was positioned at a far lower level than the rest of the body, essentially at the bottom of a pit. The reason for the movement of the body is likely due to later excavation at Pompeii in the Bourbon period that caused the upper half of the body to sink.
Therefore the man’s death was “not presumably due to the impact of the lithic block, as first assumed, but probably the result of asphyxia due to the pyroclastic flow,” they note.
In my professional opinion, the skull is quite interesting in that it has an unfused hyoid but ossified thyroid cartilage. The former is often an indicator of young age, but the hyoid can remain unfused throughout life. The throat cartilage, however, is much more strongly indicative of an older age-at-death, although it can also start turning to bone in the second decade of life. More likely, given the previously reported age from the pelvis, the observable dental wear, and the ossified cartilage, this man was in the older end of the middle adult range of 35-50 years old.
The skull and post-cranial remains will be analyzed by an anthropologist, the new report concludes, in order to more accurately reconstruct this man’s cause of death. Taphonomic study — looking at everything that has happened to a skeleton following a person’s death — is key in understanding what happened on that fateful August day in 79 AD.
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