Excavation, conservation and the ethics of human remains at Pompeii and Herculaneum for QCE Ancient History Unit 3

What this dot point is asking

QCAA wants you to engage with the issues that arise when historians and archaeologists reconstruct, conserve and display Pompeii and Herculaneum. You should cover the history of excavation since 1748, the famous body casts and the Herculaneum skeletons, the modern scientific techniques now applied, the conservation crisis at the sites, and the ethical questions raised by studying and displaying human remains. This is the dot point where Ancient History becomes most explicitly about method and ethics.

The answer

The history of excavation

Pompeii and Herculaneum were rediscovered in the eighteenth century. Herculaneum was tunnelled from 1738 and Pompeii excavated from 1748, both under Bourbon royal patronage. Early work was effectively treasure hunting: statues, frescoes and valuables were removed for royal collections, often with little or no record of where they were found, and tunnels were sometimes backfilled. This destroyed context that can never be recovered and is a major limitation on the evidence we have today.

A turning point came with Giuseppe Fiorelli, director from 1863. He introduced systematic, recorded excavation, divided the town into regions, insulae and house numbers (the system still used), and excavated layer by layer from the top down. Fiorelli professionalised the dig and made Pompeii a site of archaeological method rather than plunder. Twentieth-century directors such as Amedeo Maiuri (who worked at both sites for decades) extended scientific excavation, though Maiuri's haste also caused damage.

The body casts

Fiorelli's most famous innovation was the body cast. The victims who died in the surge phase decomposed inside the hardened ash, leaving body-shaped cavities. Fiorelli poured liquid plaster into these voids, producing casts that preserve the posture, clothing folds and sometimes facial expressions of people at the moment of death. The Garden of the Fugitives, the casts of a dog twisting against its chain, and family groups are among the most powerful images of the ancient world. The casts are a brilliant reconstruction technique, but they also raise the ethical issue that they are, in effect, sculptures made from the dead.

Herculaneum tells a different story. For a long time few bodies were found there, and it was assumed most residents had escaped. Then in the 1980s archaeologists excavated the boat sheds (fornici) on the ancient shoreline and found over 300 skeletons of people who had sheltered there waiting for rescue and were killed instantly by the heat of the surge. Because Herculaneum was sealed by the surges rather than slow pumice fall, actual bone survives, allowing study impossible at Pompeii.

Modern scientific techniques

Modern science has transformed what the human remains can tell us. CT scanning of body casts (the 2015 project on the Pompeii casts) revealed bones, dental health and even age and build without destroying the plaster. At Herculaneum, analysis of the skeletons has examined diet, disease, occupational stress on bones, and the cause and speed of death (research argued the extreme heat caused instantaneous death). DNA analysis, including a 2022 study sequencing a Pompeii victim's genome, and isotope analysis of teeth (showing where people grew up) add biological and demographic detail. These techniques let historians reconstruct population health and origins, not just architecture.

Conservation pressures

Conservation is a serious and ongoing problem. Once excavated, frescoes, mosaics and structures are exposed to sun, rain, plant growth, pollution and tourism (Pompeii receives millions of visitors a year). Decades of underfunding led to visible decay, culminating in the 2010 collapse of the House of the Gladiators, which drew international attention. The European-funded Great Pompeii Project from 2012 stabilised structures and improved drainage and management. A live debate exists over whether to excavate the roughly one-third of Pompeii still buried: leaving it protects it for future methods, but it also remains vulnerable underground. Conservation versus excavation is a genuine tension.

Ethics of the dead

The human remains raise ethical questions that QCAA expects students to engage with. The body casts and skeletons are the remains of real people who died in terror. Displaying them to tourists, photographing them, and using them in research can be seen as disrespectful or as exploiting the dead for spectacle and revenue. Others argue the remains are our most direct connection to the victims and that respectful study honours them and advances knowledge. There are also questions of consent (the dead cannot consent), of cultural ownership, and of how the dead should be curated and displayed. A strong response weighs the scientific and educational value against the dignity of the dead rather than asserting one side.