It is the latest discovery in the servants’ quarter of the villa of Civita Giuliana, scientifically investigated since 2017 when it was wrested from clandestine excavators thanks to an agreement between the Pompeii Archaeological Park and the Torre Annunziata Public Prosecutor's Office: a room, exceptionally preserved like the other two discovered in the same sector with the beds of slaves, where it was possible to make casts of furniture and other objects made of perishable materials: wood, textiles, ropes. The technique of casts, pioneered systematically since 1863 with the making of the first casts of the victims of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D., is unique in the world in that it is the result of the specific dynamics of the catastrophic event: people or objects swept away and covered by the "pyroclastic current", a burning cloud of ash and toxic gases, remained there for centuries. But as the ash solidified, forming a very solid layer known as "cinerite", organic material such as human bodies, animals or wooden objects decomposed, leaving a void in the ground. These voids can be filled with plaster during excavation to regain, from the "negative" impression, the original form. A technique that has yielded extraordinary results in the villa of Civita Giuliana, from casts of two victims and a horse to those of modest beds in the servants’ quarter. Now, an additional room expands the cross-section of the life of the last, little documented in literary sources. The room contains a bed, but also working tools and what appears to be a frame, perhaps from another bed, disassembled: also recognizable are baskets, a long rope, pieces of wood, and a saw with a blade, which seems not so different from the traditional saws used until recently. Even spotted was a piece of the rope, again as a footprint in the subsoil, that held it under tension. The current funding of the excavation is coming to an end, but the Park together with the Public Prosecutor's Office have announced that they will continue the investigation, drawing on funding for an excavation campaign provided in the Budget Law by the Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano, who visited Pompeii yesterday for an inspection. Particularly because there are still many points to be clarified in Civita Giuliana, not only on a scientific level, but also in legal terms.
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