The photograph shows a newly-discovered bedroom used by slaves just north of Pompeii, in the village of Civita Giuliana, at the time Mount Vesuvius erupted some 2,000 years ago. It doesn’t look like much, but it reveals a lot according to a report in The Smithsonian Magazine. For example, one of the beds is higher quality and had a mattress, suggesting a hierarchical structure among enslaved people, a tool, researchers think, of control by their masters. The room also had cupboards, tools and ceramics which rooms previously discovered at Civita Giuliana did not have. The bedroom also brings to mind the United States circa 1855.
© 2024 John Oliver
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