Visiting Herculaneum one immediately grasps a detail that is not easy to find when visiting Pompeii, the charred wood. But how is it possible that two cities only a few kilometers apart and both destroyed by the same eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. preserve very different elements from each other?
Here, I want to give you the explanation to this frequent question that so many people ask.
The answer lies in the mode of the eruption that affected both cities!!! Yes, because although they were buried during the same eruption, the mode of burial was different.
Let’s start by saying what happened on that August 24 or probably according to recent discoveries on October 24 of 79 AD.
The eruption that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum
The eruption, as Pliny the Younger tells us in his letters to his friend Tacitus, began around 1 p.m. Ash and lapilli (pumice) began to pour out of the crater of Vesuvius, which, driven by winds blowing southeast, struck Pompeii.
City was completely submerged with about 3 meters of volcanic materials, in contrast to Herculaneum, which due to its position west of the crater was, on the other hand, spared from the fall of pumice.
The following morning, however, the eruption took a turn, no more ash and lapilli came out of Vesuvius but a burning cloud (the pyroclastic flows). Characterized by gas, water vapor at very high temperatures and ash rose to the sky and collapsed along the slopes of the volcano. Cloud first engulfed Herculaneum, which had initially been spared by the eruption, and then later the other Vesuvian cities.
The fiery cloud that hit Herculaneum unlike Pompeii, reached an estimated temperature of about 500°C and instantly killed the inhabitants who had taken refuge along the beach and in boat warehouses. Virtually nothing was left of them but their bones due to the vaporization of soft tissue caused by the extremely high temperatures of the flow. The same fate befell other organic materials such as the wood present in Herculaneum.
In fact, the high heat and absence of oxygen due to the rapid burial with mud (creating a kind of vacuum) allowed, the perfect preservation of the wood in carbonized form, instead of its complete combustion.
And this explains why in Herculaneum it is possible to see charred wood remains that are not preserved, in contrast, in Pompeii.
What was found at Herculaneum
Many are the charred wooden artifacts found in Herculaneum during archaeological excavations and brought to light in all their splendor. In some it is still possible to catch the polychromy of colors that decorated these wooden elements.
As in the case of the extraordinary colored wooden ceiling decorations of the Telefo relief house. A perfectly preserved white fir wood, practically still alive that has kept the pigment of its color intact.
Or like many wooden cabinets found in the houses of Herculaneum, with doors that can be opened and closed as if they had been recently used.
The large wooden shelving unit that fills the store next to the house of Neptune and Amphitrite and formerly housed the large terracotta amphorae containing the wine that was sold in the same store.
And again the large sliding partition door made of charred wood that still retains the decorative bronze elements that separated the atrium from the owner’s home office (the tablinium) in the wooden partition house.
Or the charred boat found on the ancient beach of Herculaneum, opposite the fornices and preserved in the antiquarium of the ancient city.
Not to mention beds, cribs, small tables, stools. These are just some of the wooden items that can be seen when visiting the ancient city of Herculaneum. But where to find them? At the moment, they are on display in the antiquarium of the archaeological excavations, along with other valuable artifacts found during the excavations.
