AI & Archaeology · AD 79 · Pompeii, Porta Stabia necropolis, Campania, Italy
AI image recreates Pompeii victim who likely shielded his head with a mortar
The image, made with the University of Padua, is the Pompeii park's first created with AI tools and is called an experimental prototype, not a definitive likeness.
Official announcement
Pompeii, Porta Stabia necropolis, Italy The Archaeological Park of Pompeii has released an image, made with artificial intelligence, of a man who died fleeing the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. He was found outside the city walls, lying beside a broken terracotta mortar. Archaeologists think he held it over his head against falling volcanic stones.
The park made the image with the Digital Cultural Heritage Laboratory of the University of Padua. It is the first time the park has used this kind of technology to build an image from excavation data. Specialists from the Italian Ministry of Culture carried out the excavations.
Two men on the road to the coast
The man was one of two victims found in recent work in the Porta Stabia necropolis. This burial area lies just outside the walls of the ancient city. Both men seem to have been trying to reach the coast. Their positions and injuries suggest they died at different stages of the eruption.
The younger man was probably caught by a pyroclastic flow. This is a fast-moving, burning cloud of ash and hot gases. The older man died several hours earlier, under a dense fall of small volcanic stones and fragments.
The mortar lay near the older man's head and showed clear signs of breakage. The researchers interpret it as a makeshift shield. Pliny the Younger watched the eruption and described it in a letter. He wrote that people fleeing tried to protect themselves with various objects, or with pillows tied over their heads.
The man carried other things too. He had a ceramic oil lamp, which the team thinks he used to find his way in the poor visibility. A small iron ring was still on the little finger of his left hand. He also had ten bronze coins.
What the AI did, and its limits
The image shows the older man walking along a rough path. He holds the mortar above his head as debris falls around him. The team made it by combining measurements from the excavation with AI software and photo editing tools. The reports do not name the software or describe each step.
The park calls the image an experimental prototype. It is not meant as a definitive portrait of the man. The stated aim is a picture grounded in the physical evidence that a general audience can understand. According to Archaeology News, each reconstruction starts from excavation data and is checked against established methods. The reports do not say whether the face was modelled on the man's skull.
According to Archaeology News, technical details of the reconstruction have been published in the Pompeii Excavations E-journal.
Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the park's director, said the amount of data at Pompeii and other sites is now vast. Only with the help of AI, he said, can it be properly protected and used. He added that archaeologists should handle these tools themselves. Otherwise, he said, people without the right humanistic and scientific grounding will.
The culture minister, Alessandro Giuli, said the excavations show that innovative methods, applied rigorously, can offer new historical perspectives.
Professor Jacopo Bonetto of the University of Padua said AI can help produce interpretive models and improve communication. He warned that it needs controlled, methodical use, always combined with the work of specialists. Luciano Floridi, founder of the Digital Ethics Center at Yale University, said AI produces hypotheses, not truths. Those hypotheses, he said, must be reviewed, discussed, corrected, integrated and approved.
Floridi will take part in an event on ethics and AI that the park hosts in July 2026. The park plans to keep testing similar methods as part of its research programme.
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