The display of the casts has been conducted with varying degrees of interpretive framing. At different points in the history of the site, the casts have been presented with minimal contextualization, with romantic and emotional narratives, with comparative reference to contemporary families, and with the kind of neutral scientific description that the DNA study’s findings now make more necessary.
The 2024 study’s findings have immediate practical implications for the interpretive materials attached to the gold bracelet cast and the other casts whose previous descriptions are now outdated. Exhibition labels, guidebook text, audio guides, and digital presentations that describe the gold bracelet adult as a mother will need revision. The revision is not simply a matter of changing one word; it is a matter of reconsidering the interpretive framework within which the cast is presented — moving from a framework that asserted a particular identity and relationship to one that describes what is known (a genetically male adult, holding a child not closely related to them) and honestly represents what is unknown (everything about who they were to each other).
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## Revision as Method
The history of Pompeii scholarship is a history of successive revisions. The nineteenth-century excavators revised the treasure-hunting approach of the eighteenth century. Fiorelli revised the approach of his predecessors with systematic documentation and cast-making. Twentieth-century osteology revised the nineteenth-century visual interpretations of age and sex. CT scanning revised the estimates that osteology had produced from the exterior of the casts. Now ancient DNA is revising the interpretations that CT scanning and visual analysis had left in place.