The eerie casts of the victims of the A.D. 79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius paint a desolate picture of the destruction the volcano wrought on ancient cities near modern Naples. Pompeii became a 2,000-year-old time capsule when the city was frozen underneath layers of pumice, ash and pyroclastic flows.
Over the span of two centuries, archaeologists have uncovered Pompeii and its neighbor Herculaneum bit by bit, identifying quotidian remains of Roman art, architecture and food. But less attention has been paid to the things missing from the cities — and the people who carried them as they escaped the obliterating force of Vesuvius.
