The head of Pompeii's last fugitive has been found, Pompeii Archaeological Site Director Massimo Osanna told an ANSA Forum on Thursday. "We have just found the skull too, with the mouth open wide in an amazing way", he said.
Osanna also revealed that early suggestions the victim had had his head knocked off by a large rock were wrong.
"He did not die of heat shock or because of the rock that fell on him, but from suffocation," Osanna told the forum.
The rest of the skeleton was found at the end of May.
The 35-year-old man, with a limp, was hit by a pyroclastic cloud while, forced to linger by his physical defect, he turned to look at Vesuvius, an eruption of which buried Pompeii in 79 AD.
Osanna told ANSA that archaeological excavation at Pompeii must be "permanent and systematic".
He also spoke about hiring practices and other issues, including the site's budget of more than 30 million euros a year, stressing that it would not cap visitor numbers. However, he said, the numbers would be "monitored" to make sure they are not impacting the site unduly.
"The public at Pompeii is increasingly varied and diversified, there are 3.5 million (visitors a year) who are rising by up to 10% a month," he said.
"Entry must be improved, we need a reorganisation to bring it up to international standards".
Pompeii authorities are mulling introducing armed guards, metal detectors and "even the army" for terror threats, he said.
Osanna noted that this was already the case for other sensitive and symbolic art sites in Italy including the Colosseum, "to safeguard both the visitors and the site".
"We have to get well organised also so as to avoid creating queues and bottlenecks at the entry points, which would in themselves represent a target for possible (terror) attacks". On being asked about the possibility of putting tourism under the agriculture ministry, he noted that "tourism in Italy is not just cultural. Perhaps there is the need for a wider range but of course the combination of culture and tourism has worked very well." "Perhaps there is the need for a more specific nature, though cultural tourism and sea-based tourism should be the base," he added, underscoring that "the boom in museums shows an intrinsic desire for culture in our country. Schools need to train the young to appreciate and safeguard our heritage. And we need to teach people to appreciate beauty."
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