When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, it buried Pompeii under metres of ash and pumice, seemingly freezing the Roman city in time. But new research shows the story didn’t end there. Life crept back among the ruins, in a far more precarious form, and carried on for centuries.
Fresh evidence from restoration work in the city’s southern quarter reveals that Pompeii was reoccupied soon after the eruption and remained inhabited until at least the 5th century.
“It had almost always been noted by researchers and archaeologists in Pompeii [that people had moved back], but it was somewhat overshadowed by the interest in finding the marvellously preserved and wonderful artworks of AD 79,” Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of Pompeii Archaeological Park and lead author of the new study, told BBC Science Focus.
The resettlement, however, was a shadow of the city’s former self. “The reoccupation of Pompeii was not in any way comparable to the city as it was before AD 79,” Zuchtriegel said.
“It was more of a kind of slum – a very precarious, unstructured settlement. Certainly not a city in the common sense; no temples, no public buildings as far as we know, but rather a group of precarious shelters made between the ruins of the upper floors of the city of Pompeii that could be seen emerging from the ash and soil.”
Families carved out makeshift homes in the surviving upper storeys of buried buildings. Meanwhile, the lower levels – once ground floors – became cellars and caves, fitted out with hearths, ovens and even small mills.
So who chose to return to the devastated city? According to Zuchtriegel, the inhabitants were likely those with no other options. “Of course, you would have preferred to live somewhere else if you could. But there were people who maybe had no other properties, perhaps no relatives to speak of. They would have still recognised their city where they used to live.”
There was another incentive too: the chance to recover treasure buried beneath the ash. “There was also an enormous amount of wealth hidden underground, like metal, statues, coins and marble,” Zuchtriegel said.
“And so people initially may have come back to dig in the underground remains of Pompeii… Slowly, the vegetation came back, and it would have turned into a green and flourishing landscape.”
This fragile community endured for centuries. It may finally have been snuffed out by another eruption in AD 472, combined with the wider collapse of the Western Roman Empire. “There may have been a general demographic drop, migration, and new forms of poverty and hardship linked to the disintegration of the central government,” Zuchtriegel said.
“It’s quite astonishing what people are capable of bearing and suffering in these extreme situations.”
About our expert
Gabriel Zuchtriegel is the director general of the archaeological park in Pompeii. He studied classical archaeology at the Humboldt University in Berlin and received his PhD from the University of Bonn.
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