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Archaeological Fieldwork Reports
In 2015 a joint research agreement was signed between the British School at Rome, the Ilustre Colegio Oficial de Doctores y Licenciados en Letras y Ciencias de Valencia y Castellón and the Museo de Prehistoria e Historia de la Diputación de Valencia for a three-year investigation of the necropolis outside the northeastern Nolan Gate at Pompeii.
The aim of the project is to learn more about the physical characteristics of the inhabitants of Pompeii, as well as their diet, way of life and funerary practices (Alapont, Albiach and Kay, 2014). The necropolis at the Nolan Gate offers a rare opportunity as different levels of social strata are represented around the cemetery, from the monumental tombs of Marcus Obellius Firmus and Aesquilia Polla, to the burials of the Praetorian Guards opposite the tomb of Obellio, to the so-called 'poor graves' alongside the city wall. It also offers a unique insight into how they faced the moment of death during the catastrophic eruption of Vesuvius in ad 79 through the study of the several casts that had been made previously during excavations outside the Nolan Gate.
In 2015 the project began work on three burial areas within the necropolis: the tomb of Obellius Firmus, an anonymous schola-type tomb and an area of the so-called culinae burials to the south of the Nolan Gate (Fig. 1). Fig. 1.
The necropolis of Porta Nola, Pompeii. Location of the principal monuments and areas of excavation.
The tomb of Marcus Obellius Firmus was discovered and partially excavated in 1976 (De Caro, 1979). The earlier work had recovered a marble columella and a blue glass cinerary urn, presumably of Marcus Obellius Firmus, whose funeral is recorded by a marble inscription on the front pediment. The 2015 excavation discovered a second cremation inside the tomb, a preliminary analysis of which identified the burial as a mature adult male. Also recovered from inside the tomb were hundreds of bone fragments of a funerary bed, delicately carved and covered in gold leaf. Parallel to the excavations, the project is also conducting a programme of conservation and restoration of the tombs at the Nolan Gate, working under the direction of the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Pompei. The season's...