December 2, 2001

12:44 PM

Another major site buried by Vesuvius (but in the Bronze Age 1750BC!) has been discovered. Experts say it could be the world's best preserved early Bronze Age village. Among the items found were the bones of hams, a hat decorated with the teeth of a wild boar and a cage which had been raised six feet off the ground - probably to protect it from dogs - containing the remains of pregnant goats. Before this we had only holes in the ground where stakes had been, to show us what a Bronze Age village had been like.
posted by stbalbach (5 comments total)

"We also found a kiln with a pot still inside it that was being fired," Prof De Caro said.

How ironic. A kiln would be a little redundant at that time...
posted by bloggboy at 1:06 PM on December 2, 2001

I have always found the casts made from the historical remains scary when I was young, yet I couldn't stop reading those big books with the big colour pictures. Talk about unusual and meaningful deaths... and now my interest has been perked once again! How cool is it to work on an archaeological proeject studying these remains and doing excavation? Makes me want to switch majors or something.
posted by margaretlam at 2:03 PM on December 2, 2001

For everyone who, like me, thinks this stuff is incredibly cool (but, unlike me, doesn't spend whole days surfing aimlessly...), Archaeological News is a great place to go for stories like this one.
posted by sennoma at 5:03 AM on December 3, 2001

very cool...thanks for the link.
posted by th3ph17 at 10:50 AM on December 3, 2001

One of these days it's going to happen again. There's nothing extinct about Vesuvius.
posted by jfuller at 1:51 PM on December 3, 2001