Pompeii New Secrets Revealed
Professor Mary Beard explores what life was like in one of the world’s most extraordinary and iconic archaeological sites: Pompeii.
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 documentary follows the work of recovering damaged frescoes and mosaics, the excavation and rebuilding of certain key buildings and the organisation and cataloguing of the thousands of astonishing artefacts in the storerooms – from loaves of bread to pet monkeys, paint pots to purses.
And for the first time, a team is CT scanning and fully investigating the world-famous casts of the bodies to analyse the skeletons trapped within, to ascertain all they can about who they were, where they came from and how they lived. A team is also conducting DNA analysis of the bodies for the first time.
The film pieces together a full picture of daily life in Pompeii before the town was destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79.
Broadcaster: BBC One
Executive Producers
Caterina Turroni
Richard Bradley
