Michael Anderson, quoted in Earth.com’s coverage of the study, addressed this directly in noting that the findings challenge any claim to European ownership of the “Classical world.” The ancient Mediterranean was a network of movement and exchange that did not respect the national boundaries that would later develop in the same geographic space. The people of Pompeii were connected to Alexandria, to Antioch, to Athens, to Carthage, and to Rome not by the logic of modern nationalism but by the logic of a Mediterranean economy and a Roman Empire that drew people and goods from across its enormous territory.
This point has relevance for how Pompeii is presented to visitors and how it is discussed in public discourse. Presentations of Pompeii that implicitly or explicitly frame the site as evidence of a specifically European, or specifically Italian, or specifically Western classical heritage are at odds with what the genetic evidence now shows about who the city’s inhabitants actually were. The city was Roman. Its inhabitants were cosmopolitan. The two facts are not in tension.
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## The Restoration Project and Its Significance
The 2015–2019 restoration project that preserved the 86 casts and made the DNA study possible was the most systematic conservation effort in the history of Pompeii’s cast collection. It is worth describing in some detail, both because it provides the context for the DNA study and because it illustrates how Pompeii’s research infrastructure has developed over more than 150 years.
The 104 plaster casts made at Pompeii since Fiorelli’s introduction of the technique in 1863 have not been uniform in quality or condition. The earliest casts, made with Fiorelli’s plaster of Paris method, are among the most stable because the material itself is inert and dense. Later casts, made with various modifications to the technique, have had variable fates. Some were made with insufficient plaster mixing, creating air pockets that weaken the structure. Some were reinforced with iron rods that have subsequently rusted, expanding as they corroded and cracking the plaster from within. Some were repaired with materials that are themselves now degrading.