A Sealed Closet in Pompeii Opens, and Daily Life Steps Out

Coins, jewellery and other objects have been found in a sealed closet at Pompeii, CBS News reported on Thursday, giving archaeologists a further look at life in the Roman city before the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79.

A sealed space is a rare thing on a site that has been dug, reopened, shored up and dug again for more than two centuries. What such a place preserves is not the monumental Pompeii of the frescoed villa and the plaster casts, but the household's small change — the things a family keeps in a cupboard rather than displays in an atrium.

CBS describes the find as offering new insight into daily life before the eruption. The objects are modest in themselves: coins, jewellery, and what the network calls other artefacts. Their interest lies in having been closed away together, which is itself the evidence.