The eerie remains of Pompeii seem untouched. But new findings reveal a little-known postscript

The once-thriving Roman city of Pompeii resembles an eerie time capsule, seemingly unoccupied since a catastrophic volcanic eruption in AD 79, with the remains of its inhabitants forever frozen under a blanket of ash. But a closer look may reveal another bleak chapter in the tragedy’s aftermath, according to new research.

Recently unearthed clues suggest that a number of people, including survivors of the disaster as well as transients, returned to live among the ruins after the eruption, based on discoveries made during ongoing excavations of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii in southern Italy. But it’s impossible to reconstruct a complete picture of exactly how many people returned and in what circumstances based on what has been uncovered so far, said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the archaeological park.

Researchers currently investigating the Insula Meridionalis, a neighborhood in the southernmost part of the city, found pieces of pottery and other evidence dated to after the city’s devastation over the course of the past year. The artifacts paint a picture of how, after the eruption, people sought refuge in the upper floors of buildings visible above the ash, Zuchtriegel said.

Pompeii’s residents ultimately abandoned the site following another devastating eruption in the fifth century, and the city remained undisturbed until excavations began in 1748.

Zuchtriegel, an archaeologist and coauthor of a new study published on August 6 in the E-Journal of the Excavations of Pompeii, said the city’s initial destruction in AD 79 has “monopolized memory.” Previous traces of Pompeii’s reoccupation, he added, have been known by researchers — but also largely ignored.

“In the enthusiasm to reach the levels of 79, 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 said in a statement.

“Thanks to the new excavations, the picture is now clearer: post-79 Pompeii reemerges, 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.”

Artifacts from a second chance

During excavations of one building in Insula Meriodionalis, archaeologists determined that some of the structure’s vaulted ceilings didn’t collapse until sometime between the second and fourth centuries, meaning its storerooms were likely partially visible on the surface as people returned to Pompeii.

Artifacts uncovered at the site suggest spaces that had once served as ground floors became cellars and caves where the latest occupants constructed ovens, mills and fireplaces.

Items found in the building’s storerooms also indicate that the reoccupation of Pompeii was likely more permanent than transitory, Zuchtriegel said.

The researchers discovered remains of ceramics and cooking vessels, including a ceramic lamp decorated with an early symbol of Christ, all dated to the fifth century. The team also found a small, family-style bread oven from the same time period that was built with reused materials, such as bricks and tiles, within a Roman cistern.

A coin among the Insula Meriodionalis haul that depicts the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, dated to AD 161, suggests people returned to Pompeii just a few decades after the infamous eruption, Zuchtriegel said.

Life after a disaster

People inhabited the city until the “Pollena eruption” of Mount Vesuvius in 472, but Pompeii failed to become the thriving, vital port town it was before. A series of additional eruptions also occurred early in the sixth century, according to the study authors.

“These events likely caused serious damage to an already weak economy and may have led to the abandonment of the settlements attested in the Vesuvian area,” the authors wrote in the study.

Researchers estimate the city was once home to about 20,000 people when the AD 79 Vesuvius eruption occurred, and debate about how many died during the disaster is ongoing. So far, archaeologists have uncovered two-thirds of Pompeii and found the remains of about 1,300 people — a number that doesn’t include those who perished beyond the center of town.

With nowhere else to go, survivors likely returned to the ruins, living in an ash desert and looking for remnants of their homes and items — and sometimes in the process unearthing remains of victims, like the skeleton of a horse found wedged between two beams in the Insula Meriodionalis.

Amid the pillaging of homes, Roman magistrates were likely sent to the city to prevent an anarchic type of existence, based on ancient literary sources the authors referenced in the study.

Titus, Roman emperor from AD 79 to 81, sent two consuls to the Campanian region where Pompeii is located after the eruption to provide aid, assess the city and reallocate the property of those who had died in the eruption with no surviving heirs, Zuchtriegel said. The emperor also provided funds to help survivors, and one text even suggests he visited Pompeii after the eruption, Zuchtriegel added.

Vegetation also slowly returned to the land, and Pompeii’s post-eruption inhabitants dug wells to reach groundwater beneath the ash coating the city, the study authors said. The post-eruption settlers also buried their own, based on evidence of a newborn that was interred at the site during the reoccupation.

“We have to assume that although occupation was not temporary, life within the ruins must have been fairly basic although a latrine had been constructed presumably for those tending to the baking of bread,” Zuchtriegel said. “Most of the comforts of first century Roman life had been eradicated.”

The study demonstrates that contemporary archaeology is not about hunting for treasure, but reading signs in the sediment and understanding relationships among all the surviving physical evidence, said Daniel Diffendale, postdoctoral researcher at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. He was not involved in the new research.

Diffendale noted that scattered evidence for human activity at Pompeii post-eruption existed prior to the new study, but this latest research uncovers a previously unknown level of detail.

“This is more evidence of stable post-eruption habitation,” Diffendale wrote in an email. “These are people carving out residences from utilitarian spaces, not living in luxurious atrium houses. On the other hand, this could also represent a part of the population that wasn’t living in those luxurious houses prior to the eruption either, and whose lives are scarcely visible elsewhere in Pompeii.”

Future excavations could reveal how the people reoccupying Pompeii supported themselves, whether it was through salvaging remains of the city, trying to live off the land agriculturally or creating some other form of commerce, he said.

Dr. Marcello Mogetta, chair of the department of classics, archaeology and religion at the University of Missouri, said the Archaeological Park of Pompeii’s staff should be commended for bringing the afterlife of the Roman town into sharper focus through its excavations and exhibitions.

Mogetta was not involved in this research, but he is leading a project that investigates an area near the one discussed in the study. One of the authors of the new study is the officer responsible for the sector of Pompeii that Mogetta is studying, he said.

“This study ultimately highlights the resilience of the inhabitants of the wider Vesuvian region and their active role in the economic recovery of the area over periods that have been largely removed from the site’s long-term history,” Mogetta said.

The findings shed light on the “invisible city” of Pompeii that rose again after AD 79 — one that is just beginning to be investigated, the authors wrote in the report.

“In these cases, we archaeologists feel like psychologists of memory buried in the earth: we bring out the parts removed from history, and 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,” Zuchtriegel said.

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