Professor Mary Beard, renowned classicist, TV historian, Newnham alumna and Fellow, will explore what life was like in one of the world’s most extraordinary and iconic archaeological sites, in Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed with Mary Beard on BBC One.
With unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to the Great Pompeii Project – an initiative to investigate and restore Pompeii – the one-hour special features cutting-edge modern technology to reveal what life was like in Pompeii 2,000 years ago. The programme will be broadcast at 9pm on Thursday, March 3 2016.
For the first time ever, CT scanning and x-ray equipment bring new light to the secrets of the victims of the 79 AD eruption. Professor Beard unpacks the human stories behind the tragic figures – gladiators, slaves, businesswomen and children.
Professor Beard – a world Pompeii expert and author of Pompeii: Life Of A Roman Town – joined an international team as they brought the very latest technology to bear on this most extraordinary of archaeological sites.
The research team used a CT scanner to investigate the world-famous casts of the bodies to analyse the skeletons trapped within, to ascertain all they could about who they were, where they came from and how they lived.
Professor Beard wrote in her blog for the Times Literary Supplement: “The headline is the examination of the plaster casts with a team of scientists (and a CT scanner). These are in many ways the most famous, if ghoulish, attractions of the site. They have been made since the mid nineteenth century, when archaeologists noticed that around many of the skeletons they unearthed there was a puzzling cavity in the volcanic debris.
“They worked out that it was where the clothes and flesh had disintegrated, leaving a hole; and they also saw that if they poured plaster into the cavity, they would end up with an exact image of the dead person in the position in which they died, with the traces of their clothes, shoes and sometimes their features. And so indeed they did.”
“Over the years, all kinds of stories have grown up around these casts and they have been given identities, roles and names: from ‘the Moor” to ‘the beggar’ or ‘the pregnant lady’. But noone has been able to take a look, certainly not inside the casts, to see just how plausible any of this is.
“That is what we were able to do with the scanner and some X-ray equipment, and we were able to think about their ages and state of health, and whether there was anything to back up the usual identifactions (was the person pregnant, for example, or was their clothing just bundled up around their middle?). You wont be surprised to learn that there were some surprises.”
Pompeii: New Secrets Revealed with Mary Beard will be broadcast at 9pm on Thursday, March 3 on BBC One.