The cataclysmic eruption of Mount Vesuvius obliterated Pompeii in 79 CE, but the Roman city didn’t remain a lifeless disaster zone for long. According to new research published in the E-Journal of the Excavations of Pompeii, a handful of survivors, destitute wanderers, and treasure hunters continued to call the ruins home for decades.
Pompeii’s decimation remains one of history’s most famous natural disasters. At least 20,000 residents lived in the economic hub prior to the huge earthquakes and volcanic eruption that famously destroyed the city. Following the devastation, the city was reduced to a wasteland of smoldering rubble buried in ash. The exact death total will never be known, but archaeologists have tallied around 1,300 victims in their excavations so far. Thousands more are assumed to have died while fleeing the eruption.
The Emperor Titus attempted but failed to revive Pompeii and its sibling town Herculaneum soon after the catastrophe, leaving the desolate region largely abandoned until its rediscovery in 1748. According to this new research, “largely” is the key word in this instance—not that it sounds like it was a very fun place to eke out a living.
“Thanks to the new excavations, the picture is now clearer,” study co-author and Pompeii site director Gabriel Zuchtriegel said in a statement. “Post-79 Pompeii re-emerges less as a city than as a precarious and gray agglomeration, a kind of encampment, a favela among the still recognizable ruins of the Pompeii of old.”
The findings confirm a longstanding hypothesis that the Mount Vesuvius eruption didn’t prevent people from returning to the region once the dust settled. Survivors who couldn’t find ways to leave the area were stuck there, while wanderers likely arrived to scour for valuables and other items left behind. However, those who did come back to Pompeii would never experience the same Roman support systems and infrastructure as they did before the disaster.
Given the level of destruction, Pompeii’s few post-eruption inhabitants would have made their homes amid upper floor ruins of any buildings that endured the devastation. Although initially barren, it wouldn’t have taken long for vegetation to return thanks to the nutrient-rich ash dunes, providing additional food sources for the makeshift community. Over time, excavations show that people eventually dug cellars and caves into the former ground levels for ovens, fireplaces, and mills. Unfortunately, evidence of this unexamined era is hard to find. In many cases, it’s now impossible.
“The epochal event of the city’s destruction in 79 CE has monopolized memory,” explained Zuchtriegel. “In the enthusiasm to reach the [excavation] levels of 79 [CE], with wonderfully preserved frescoes and furnishings still intact, the faint traces of the site’s reoccupation were literally removed and often swept away without any documentation.”
Zuchtriegel likened archaeologists in these situations to “psychologists of memory buried in the earth.”
“We bring out the parts removed from history,” he said. “This phenomenon should lead us to a broader reflection on the archaeological unconscious, on everything that is repressed or obliterated or remains hidden, in the shadow of other seemingly more important things.”
In the end, the attempts to make the city sustainably liveable appear to have ultimately failed. While a population remained at Pompeii for a few generations, its last inhabitants finally abandoned the town during the 5th century CE. The final nail in Pompeii’s coffin? Possibly yet another volcanic event at Mount Vesuvius known as the Pollena eruption of 472 CE.
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