Pompeii's Plaster Casts: How DNA Changed Their Stories

For generations, the plaster figures of Pompeii have been the emotional centerpiece of one of the world's most famous archaeological sites. However, the most pervasive belief about these figures is fundamentally incorrect: they are not petrified bodies turned to stone by volcanic ash.

When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, victims were buried under meters of pumice and ash. Over centuries, their biological soft tissues decomposed entirely, leaving precise hollow cavities within the compacted volcanic material. In 1863, nineteenth-century archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli pioneered a technique of pouring liquid plaster into these voids before excavating them. By chipping away the hardened ash, he reproduced the forms left by the victims' bodies within the hardened volcanic deposits. The visible forms are plaster, but many contain the victims' actual skeletal remains.

How Did the Victims Actually Die?

The traditional image of all Pompeii victims slowly suffocating under falling ash is too simplistic. Modern physical anthropology has revealed a far more complex, and debated, reality. Research led by Pier Paolo Petrone in 2010 argued that lethal heat from a pyroclastic density current caused rapid or instantaneous death for many victims. This study estimated temperatures in Pompeii exceeded 250°C, causing a heat-associated flexed posture often described as the "pugilistic attitude"—a contraction of limbs due to intense heat, not a defensive reaction.

However, the scientific debate is not settled. Other studies, such as a 2023 analysis of victims at Porta Nola, maintain that asphyxiation played a role in specific contexts, as a more diluted pyroclastic current carried fine, suffocating ash. The evidence therefore suggests that there may be no single cause of death applicable to every victim: lethal mechanisms varied with eruption phase, location, and exposure.

What DNA Reveals About the Victims

While anthropologists debated the cause of death, geneticists began to question who the victims actually were. In 2024, a study published in Current Biology extracted ancient DNA from 14 casts undergoing restoration. The findings showed that several long-standing assumptions about the sex and biological relationships of particular casts were incorrect.

The famous "House of the Golden Bracelet" group had long been presented to tourists as a tragic nuclear family. The adult wearing an elaborate golden bracelet and holding a child on its lap was long interpreted as a wealthy mother. Yet, DNA analysis revealed the adult was genetically male, and the four individuals were biologically unrelated. Similarly, the highly photographed "Embrace," often interpreted as two sisters or a mother and daughter dying together, was shown to include at least one genetic male.

How We Turned Victims Into Stories

The DNA evidence does not mean these people were strangers. Biological unrelatedness cannot tell us whether they shared familial, household, legal, or other social relationships. Instead, the results expose how readily modern observers turned physical proximity, jewelry, and presumed sex into stories about Roman family relationships. The early interpretations constructed a tragedy that was easy to consume, and sometimes photographs of the casts were even oriented specifically to highlight faces that appeared fearful.

Today, visiting the casts in Pompeii presents an uncomfortable reality. The casts remain on display, but their true nature—as archaeological casts containing real human remains and complex, unknowable social relationships—contradicts the neat labels assigned to them a century ago. Science has dismantled the simple stories, revealing that the truth of Pompeii's victims is far more complicated than the myths.