Pompeii has skeletons to spare, but it could use some live bodies to help out.
Nearly two millenniums after a volcano's wrath trapped it in time, this city of the dead is still surrendering secrets, offering intimate glimpses into Roman daily life in one of the liveliest spots in the ancient empire.For decades, a 54-acre section - roughly one-quarter of this doomed city - was a blank on tourist maps. Much of Pompeii was unearthed in the past century, but since the 1950s, excavation of the last swath has been sporadic.
Since 1986, however, digging has been moving along in Pom-peii's southeast end, near the ancient palestra, or exercise field, clearing the area of 2-story-high mounds of stone and ash belched out of Vesuvius in 79 A.D.
Last summer's discovery on a rooftop of the remains of 10 people seeking escape was a tantalizing taste of the tales Pompeii may yet tell. They included two children, a pregnant woman and a man trying to shield her with a veil from suffocating volcanic ash.
Casts were immediately made of the first human skeletons dug up in about 30 years to fill the space left in the ash. Unlike earlier casts, these remain in place for tourists. A wooden beam that knocked a man in the head still lies across the skull. Another victim has roof tiles on her back.
Archaeologists predict much of the area will be finished in two or three years, but that doesn't mean the public will soon see it.
Pompeii suffers a chronic shortage of help and money to protect, maintain and display the wealth, as do many other archaeological treasures in Italy.
"I increase the area that can be seen, but the number of guards doesn't change," complained Pompeii's superintendent, Baldassare Conticello.
He estimated 30 percent to 40 percent of the excavations stay closed - partly for safety concerns but also because not enough custodians are around to keep watch over tourists peering at fading erotic frescoes in what was a bordello or wandering over mosaic floors in villa courtyards.
Conticello groused, "I restore, but I don't have money for maintenance. I put up anti-theft sensors, but grass grows over them" because of lack of gardeners.
A colleague analyzed plant roots found in the ruins, and now acres of Pompeii bloom as of old - hazelnut trees and grape vines in one garden, for instance. But irrigation is unreliable. "Two days ago, we had the first day of no water this season," Conticello said in an interview this week.
At each dig site, plastic bins fill up with ancient debris - terra cotta shards, rusted nails, button-like bronze door decorations much like the ones Romans use today.
With tens of thousands of pieces, why keep digging?
"We're obliged to dig, to restore the sites to give to future archaeologists to study," Conticello says.
As soon as a room is dug out, protective wood-beamed ceilings are quickly erected - if fragments indicate that's what originally covered the room. Past excavations often left the unforgiving Mediterranean sun to bleach the burnt-oranges, cool greens and yellows of frescoes that had survived rich-hued until modern man cleared away layers of ash.
Unearthed this spring were cookware and coins archaeologists think survived from a kind of ancient fast-food stand run outside an enterprising citizen's house near the amphitheater.
Archaeologist Antonio De Simone, who grew up in the shadow of Vesuvius, thinks there are more than just small details to unearth. Earlier digs tended to concentrate on some of the more sumptous villas. He notes that the section being dug out now documents Pompeii's large middle-class.