A Sealed Closet in Pompeii Yields Coins and Jewellery

CBS News reported this week that excavators at Pompeii have recovered coins, jewellery and other objects from a sealed closet in the buried Roman city, a find the network said offers new insight into daily life there before Vesuvius destroyed it in A.D. 79.

The worth of such a discovery lies in the seal. A space that was closed and left undisturbed keeps what open rooms lose to looters, weather and two thousand years of later disturbance: the small, the portable, the things a household put away and never came back for. CBS News did not say how many objects were recovered, where within the site the closet stands, or when the discovery was made.

Pompeii sits on the plain south-east of Naples, beneath the mountain that buried it, and it is among the most visited archaeological sites in Italy. Finds there become international news within a day, which is why a cupboard's contents can travel further than a gallery's new wing.