Following the most extensive archaeological excavation in Pompeii for a generation. Over the course of a year, an all-Italian team of archaeologists excavate an entire city block, Insula 10, in the north of the city. The team aims to unearth the buildings, their purpose, who lived there and what happened to them during the eruption.
Chapter 1: The Bodies
The excavation begins with the discovery of a large brick-built oven. It begins as a mystery, as it is too big to be just for a private residence. But further investigations reveal it was part of a thriving commercial bakery, selling its bread wholesale to the people of Pompeii.
Chapter 2: Escape
The dig continues and the all-Italian team of archaeologists discover the remains of a horse harness. As they cannot find any remains of the horse, they wonder if it managed to escape Pompeii as the eruption began.
Professor Steven Tuck of Miami University joins the team as he seeks to trace those who might have escaped the city and determine the number of people who lived in Pompeii.
Chapter 3: The Final Hours
The archaeologists complete the excavation of a wealthy residence, a bakery and a laundry and, in doing so, discover evidence of what people were doing in the city during its final hours.
Nineteen hours after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius begins, most of Pompeii is buried in metres of pumice. All over the city, roofs have collapsed, killing many, but some residents survive. As the eruption begins to subside, are they over the worst?
Consider how to put your knowledge of geology to use. Issues faced by your community may benefit from geologic insights about groundwater, watersheds, roadways, pollution, and historic questions such as abandoned mines and quarries. Practical geology will only grow in importance as the world deals with climate change, resource shortages, and the pressing need to live in harmony with the planet.
Trace the history of oil exploration and recovery, focusing on the geology of petroleum and natural gas formations. To strike oil, you need to find a source rock, a reservoir rock, a caprock, and a structural feature called a trap where oil can pool. Survey some of the world's most productive oil fields, and investigate the plusses and minuses of hydraulic fracturing, also known as "fracking."
Mining is one of the oldest applications of practical geology. Find out how metals are classified and how most are associated with igneous and metamorphic deposits. Some metals, like gold, can be mined in a pure"nativestate that requires little processing. Discover how and where to go prospecting for gold, using the panning process perfected by the Forty-Niners in California.
Turn to non-foliated metamorphic rocks, those without a distinctive mineral orientation. Investigate the different geologic conditions that create such rocks. Then survey a wide selection, spotlighting their beauty (marble), utility (soapstone), durability (quartzite), and economic value (banded iron formations). Professor Cotter discusses a few of his favorite metamorphic sites.
Metamorphic rocks form under conditions halfway between those of sedimentary and igneous rocks. A good analogy is the process of glacier formation that turns snow into dense, interlocking crystals of ice. Focus on foliated metamorphic rocks, such as slate and gneiss, which have lineation patterns. Geologists can read these patterns to reconstruct ancient mountain ranges and plate boundaries.
Rocks are made up of minerals, which give rocks their immense variety. For example, the mineral quartz has the crystalline clarity of ice, while graphite is opaque and slippery, and pyrite has a metallic sheen. Most rocks are a mix of different minerals. Survey the most common types, analyze their chemistry and molecular structure, and learn how to identify them through a series of simple tests.