Casts of bodies in Pompeii, Italy.

Casts of bodies found during excavations at Pompeii, Italy. After a drawing in an 1893 edition of L'illustration. The city was buried by ash after an eruption of Mt Vesuvius in AD 79. In 1863 Italian archaeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli was in charge of excavations and he saw that some voids in the ash layer contained human remains. To quote Wikipedia: "It was Fiorelli who realised these were spaces left by the decomposed bodies and so devised the technique of injecting plaster into them to recreate the forms of Vesuvius's victims. This technique is still in use today, with a clear resin now used instead of plaster because it is more durable, and does not destroy the bones, allowing further analysis."