The once-shining city of Pompeii in Rome has resembled a creepy time capsule since the devastating volcanic eruption in 79 AD, with its inhabitants’ bodies frozen forever under a blanket of ashes. However, new research shows that meticulous views could reveal another dark chapter in the aftermath of the tragedy.
Recently excavated cues suggest that many people, including disaster survivors and temporary people, have returned to living among the abandoned ins following the eruption, based on finds made during the ongoing excavation of the archaeological park in Pompeii, southern Italy. However, Gabriel Zuchtliegel, director of the Archaeology Park, said:
Researchers currently investigating the nearby island of Meridionalis, which is currently at the southernmost tip of the city, have discovered pottery and other evidence that have been traced back to the city’s devastation over the past year. The artifact paints a picture of how people called for shelter to the upper floors of the building, visible above ashes, after the eruption, Zuchtriegel said.
Pompeii residents eventually abandoned the site after another devastating eruption in the 5th century, and the city remained undisturbed until the excavation began in 1748.
Zuchtriegel, an archaeologist and co-author of the new study, published at the Pompeii excavation on August 6, said the city’s first destruction at AD 79 had “monopoly memory.” Previous traces of Pompeii’s reoccupied are known to researchers, but have been largely ignored, he added.
“With the enthusiasm to reach the level of 79, the incredibly preserved frescoes and furniture were still unharmed, and faint traces of the site’s reoccupying were literally removed and often wiped out without documentation,” Zuchtriegel said in a statement.
“The photographs are now clearer thanks to new excavations. Pompeii reappears after 79. The unstable, grey agglomeration, camp-like cities, and poor among the still recognizable ruins of old Pompeii.”
During the excavation of one building in Insula Meriodionalis, archaeologists decided that some of the vaulted ceilings of the structure would not collapse between the second and fourth centuries.
Artifacts discovered at the site suggest that the space that once served as a ground floor has become a basement and cave where the most recent residents built ovens, mills and fireplaces.
Items in the building’s storage indicate that the reoccupied Pompeii is likely to be more permanent than temporary, Zuchtriegel said.
Researchers discovered the remains of ceramics and cooking containers, including ceramic lamps decorated with early symbols of Christ dated in the 5th century. The team also found a small family-style bread oven for the same period, made from recycled materials such as bricks and tiles, inside a Roman water tank.
The coin between the island Meliodionalis, depicting Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, dating back to 161 AD, suggests that people returned to Pompeii just decades after the infamous eruption, Zuchtliegel said.
People lived in the city until the “Polena Eruption” on Mount Vesuvius in 472, but Pompeii could not become the prosperous and important port town that it had previously been. According to the research authors, a series of additional eruptions occurred in the early sixth century as well.
“These events likely caused serious damage to an already weak economy, leading to the proven abandonment of settlements in the Besbia region,” the author wrote in his study.
Researchers estimate that the city once lived around 20,000 people when the AD 79 Vesuvius eruption occurred, and are debating the number of deaths during the disaster. So far, archaeologists have discovered two-thirds of Pompeii and have discovered around 1,300 remains.
With nowhere else to go, survivors may return to the abandoned serate, live in the ashes desert, searching for the remains of their homes and items.
In the looting of the house, Roman magistrates may have sent the authors mentioned in the study to prevent disorderly beings, based on ancient literary sources.
Titus, the Roman emperor from 79 to 81 AD, sent two consuls to the area of Campania where Pompeii is located, providing assistance after the eruption, to evaluate the city and relocate the property of the surviving heirs and those who died. The emperor also provided funding to support survivors, with some texts suggesting he visited Pompeii after the eruption, Zuchtriegel added.
The vegetation also slowly returned to the land, with the post-eruption residents of Pompeii digging wells and reaching groundwater under the ashes coating the city, the study authors said. Based on evidence of newborns buried on the grounds again during the occupation, the settlers after the invasion also buried themselves.
“The occupation was not temporary, but we must assume that life in the abandoned in must have been rather basic, despite the toilets being built for those who baking bread,” Zuchtliegel said. “Most of the comforts of life in Romans in the first century had been eradicated.”
This study shows that modern archaeology is not about hunting treasures, but about reading sediment signs and understanding the relationship between all the physical evidence that survived, says Daniel Defendale, a postdoctoral researcher at Scola Normal Superoa in Pisa. He was not involved in new research.
Diffendale noted that there was scattered evidence of human activity after Pompeii corruption before the new study, but this latest study reveals a level of detail previously unknown.
“This is more evidence of stable residence after rage,” Defendale wrote in an email. “These are people who carve out homes from utilitarian spaces that do not live in luxury atrium homes, while this could represent a portion of the population that did not live in those luxury homes before the eruption.
Future excavations can reveal how those who once again snatched Pompeii backed themselves.
Dr. Marcello Moguetta, chairman of the Faculty of Classical Studies, Archaeology and Religion at the University of Missouri, said the Archaeological Park of Pompeii staff should be praised for leading the Roman town’s world to a more keen concentration through excavations and exhibitions.
Moguetta was not involved in this study, but he leads a project examining areas nearby the areas discussed in the study. He said one of the authors of the new study is head of the Pompeii sector where Moguetta is studying.
“The study ultimately highlights the resilience of the wider Vesuvian region and its active role in the region’s economic recovery over a period of time that has been largely removed from the site’s long-term history,” Moguetta said.
The findings shed light on the “invisible city” of Pompeii, which rose again after AD 79.
“In these cases, we archaeologists feel like psychologists of memories buried in the earth. We draw out parts removed from history. This phenomenon should lead us to a broader reflection, in the shadow of other important things, about everything that has been suppressed or erased or hidden.”
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