Researchers from the ÁTROPOS group at the University of Valencia say new analysis of plaster casts from Pompeii shows that many victims of the AD 79 eruption wore unusually heavy wool clothes — a detail that may influence how scholars interpret the eruption’s timing.
The team examined fourteen casts and found that people both indoors and outside wore the same outfit: a wool tunic and a wool mantle. Fabric impressions preserved in the plaster reveal a coarse, dense weave.
Clothing evidence challenges the accepted August date
The findings add to the long-running debate over when Mount Vesuvius erupted. The widely accepted date of August 24, based on Pliny the Younger’s writings, assumes warm late-summer conditions.
Researchers say wearing two layers of thick wool while trying to escape does not match typical August weather. The clothing may point to cooler conditions or to environmental hazards that made heavier garments necessary.
Researchers analyze fabric patterns captured in plaster
The ÁTROPOS group, which studies death and funerary practices, focused on textile impressions preserved when casts were made in the voids left by the victims’ bodies. Wool was the most common and affordable fabric of the time, but the study notes that its appearance in two heavy layers across all cases carries important implications.
🔎Un estudio de la Universitat de València sobre la ropa que vestían en Pompeya (Italia), plantean controversias sobre la fecha en la que hasta ahora se consideraba que se había producido el suceso.
🔎Concluyen que vestían túnica y un manto de lana que era muy pesada. pic.twitter.com/lNqiUdIeZT
— EFE C. Valenciana (@EFE_CValenciana) December 3, 2025
The fabric patterns were consistent whether the victims were found inside houses or outside in open spaces.
An expert explains what the casts reveal about the final moments
Llorenç Alapont, archaeologist, anthropologist, and professor of ancient history at the University of Valencia, said the casts provide a direct view of how people dressed on a single specific day in antiquity. He said the plaster shows both the shape of the garments and the coarse texture of the wool. Most victims wore the same two-piece combination.
He added that researchers cannot determine whether the clothes served as protection from volcanic gases or from the heat produced by the eruption.
During his presentation at the International Congress on the Date of the Vesuvius Eruption, Alapont said the garments point to more than cooler-than-usual weather. He explained that the day also showed harmful environmental conditions that required extra protection.
Heavy wool weaving was clearly identifiable in four of the fourteen casts studied. The casts analyzed were originally discovered in 1975 in the Porta Nola Necropolis.
New findings add momentum to the ongoing debate
The clothing evidence joins several other clues that question the traditional August 24 timeline. Earlier discoveries of autumn fruits, household stoves containing traces of embers, and wine fermenting in dolia — clay vessels similar to amphorae — all suggest the eruption may have occurred later in the year.
These indicators have pushed scholars to expand their methods and continue examining the true timing of the disaster that buried Pompeii.
