DNA Analysis Refutes Some Anthropologists’ Pompei Stories

When we visited Pompei many years ago, the plaster castes of of the skeletons of victims created powerful memories. Anthropologists created stories about who they were and what they were doing when disaster struck. Now DNA can be analyzed from the bones, to learn the gender and relatedness of the victims.
What has been learned often refutes the stories. For instance, one group of four was viewed as a mother with her three children. DNA analysis shows that the adult in the group was a male, and none of the four victims was related to each other. The moral of this story seems to be to take anthropological stories based on slender evidence, with an especially large grain of salt.

The DNA analysis is discussed in:

Franz Lidz. “Pompeii Narratives Take a Twist With DNA.” The New York Times (Tues., November 12, 2024): D4.

(Note: the online version of the article has the date Nov. 7, 2024, and has the title “With DNA, Pompeii Narratives Take a Twist.”)

The academic paper reporting the DNA analysis is:

Pilli, Elena, Stefania Vai, Victoria C. Moses, Stefania Morelli, Martina Lari, Alessandra Modi, Maria Angela Diroma, Valeria Amoretti, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, Massimo Osanna, Douglas J. Kennett, Richard J. George, John Krigbaum, Nadin Rohland, Swapan Mallick, David Caramelli, David Reich, and Alissa Mittnik. “Ancient DNA Challenges Prevailing Interpretations of the Pompeii Plaster Casts.” Current Biology 34, no. 22 (2024): 5307-18.e7.