In a new phase of digs at Italy’s famous Pompeii site engulfed by a volcanic eruption from Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, archaeologists have found five new skeletons of women and children. 

The latest find comes as archaeologists discovered a new inscription on a wall in the same house last week , revealing the eruption may have occurred two months later that historically documented.

According to the Director General of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, Professor of Classical Archeology at the University of Naples “Federico II”, Massimo Osanna said the skeletal remains were identified as two women and three children.

Professor Osanna said the remains probably belonged to a group of women and children who sought refuge from the devastating eruption by barricading themselves in a bedroom in a recently excavated area known as “House with the Garden,”.

Remnants of what could be a sofa or a bed were found next to the skeletons.

The extraordinary find is the latest in a series of extraordinary discoveries as part of a new excavation of digs not undertaken since the 1950s.

The remains were found in the same house where archaeologists discovered the new inscriptions on October 17.

New excavations in the ancient buried city of Pompeii have yielded the undisturbed skeletons. Photo: AAP

The inscription proves that Vesuvius actually covered Pompeii in ash two months later than previously assumed: The day of the eruption would therefore have been on October 24 instead of August 24, 79 AD.

Professor Osanna said on Wednesday that the findings gave scientists more information about the eruption.

“The ash had been falling for 18 hours,” he said, with pieces of lava falling on roofs and filling the streets, making escape impossible and the need to push a sofa against the door to stop the force of the ash.

According to the official Pompeii Sites Twitter account, the charcoal writings, coins and even the discovery of figs, nuts and pomegranates give further weight to the theories the eruption occurred in October.

“The recent discovery of enrollment in charcoal further corroborates a series of testimonies which in the past had led scholars to hypothesize the ‘ # eruption in 79 AD in the autumn. Let’s go over some of those tracks, just today that is the # 24Ottobre!,” it read.

And a “coin in silver with the effigy of Tito and an inscription that celebrates Emperor for the fifteenth time, provides, based on a comparison with literary evidence, a precise chronological horizon, surely back to the month of # August of 79 AD

Riaffiorano, in una stanza della “Casa del giardino” di recente scavo, i resti scheletrici di almeno 6 individui, ammucchiati e sparpagliati in più punti dell’ambiente.#Pompei

>>> https://t.co/7zmZUwFBco pic.twitter.com/3iTOb8J2Gq

— Pompeii Sites (@pompeii_sites) October 24, 2018

-with AAP