Life in Pompei exposed

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2009-07-15-pompeii_N.htm

University of Kentucky researchers this month announced their three-dimensional scan of an unopened papyrus scroll, collected with the aim of "virtually" unrolling the charred document.

• An ivory "throne" discovered in Herculaneum last year turns out to be an elaborate incense burner tripod, Maria Paola Guidobaldi of the Archaeological Office of Napoli and Pompeii reported at a June symposium at the Getty museum.

At the Los Angeles exhibits, curators hope to similarly show a different face of Pompeii.

"A lot of the past shows were about the dead, people caught in the eruption," says Jarrett Lobell of Archaeology magazine. Plaster casts of human remains that were preserved as hollow spaces in the volcanic ash are among famous artifacts of Herculaneum and Pompeii.

Instead, the exhibits at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum focus on the good life among Rome's jet set, who re-created Greek art and Macedonian palaces to show off their status among their peers.

Scholars have turned from looking at Pompeii on the day of the eruption to how residents lived their lives in the centuries before the disaster, Lapatin says.