Herculaneum
Herculaneum was a Roman town in Campania, Italy, which was buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Modern estimates of Herculaneum's population at the time of its destruction put the number of inhabitants at 4,000–5,000, compared to Pompeii's population of 20,000.[1] It covered an area of just under 12 hectares, and the excavated areas show its streets were laid out on a grid pattern. Whereas Pompeii has been extensively excavated and a minority of the area within the city walls remains covered, historian Michael Grant writing in the 1970s commented that in comparison very little of Herculaneum had been thoroughly excavated: just four blocks.[2][3] Amongst the ruins of Herculaneum is a building which has become known as the 'Villa of the Papyri', the only surviving example of a library from Antiquity.[4] Since 1997, the town has been part the UNESCO's World Heritage Site 'Archaeological Areas of Pompei, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata'.[5]
- ↑ Sigurdsson, Haraldur; Cashdollar, Stanford; and Sparkes, Stephen R. J. (1982). "The Eruption of Vesuvius in A. D. 79: Reconstruction from Historical and Volcanological Evidence", American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 86, no. 1, p. 39.
- ↑ Grant, Michael (1976). Cities of Vesuvius: Pompeii & Herculaneum. pp. 20, 59–60. London: Penguin Books.
- ↑ Ward-Perkins, John & Claridge, Amanda (1976). Pompeii AD79. Bristol: Imperial Tobacco Limited. p. 78. ISBN 0905692-00-4.
- ↑ Zarmakoupi, Mantha (2010). The Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum archaeology, reception, and digital reconstruction. Berlin & New York: De Gruyter. p. vii. ISBN 9783110215434.
- ↑ Archaeological Areas of Pompei, Herculaneum and Torre Annunziata, UNESCO. Accessed 16 October 2012.