As the Roman holiday resort of Pompeii is further excavated, the methods used become more and more sophisticated. Archaeologists have recently discovered the crushed remains of two people beneath a collapsed wall. From these remains they are able to deduce that not only did the city suffer a heavy rain of ash and pumice from erupting Mt Vesuvius in 79 CE, followed hours later by pyroclastic flows which killed all the remaining inhabitants, but that in between these two events the city was struck by a heavy earthquake. It was this that toppled the wall.