Herculaneum

Pompeii got ash; Herculaneum got pyroclastic surge, and the difference is why this is the better site for some things. The heat carbonised organic material instead of burning it away, so roof beams, doors, beds, rope, food and papyrus survived. For a long time it looked as though everyone had escaped, until excavation between 1980 and 1982 opened the arched boat houses on the old waterfront and found around 340 people who had gone down to the shore to wait for rescue that never came, the men mostly out on the beach and the women and children inside the vaults. In the Villa of the Papyri a library of carbonised scrolls was found between 1752 and 1754, unreadable because opening them destroys them, and in 2024 the Vesuvius Challenge used AI on CT scans to read hundreds of words across fifteen columns, about five percent of one scroll. Excavation has largely stopped in favour of conserving what is already open.