Pompeii Had a Second Act

Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, burying Pompeii under some 30 feet of ash. But Pompeii's story didn't end there, according to fresh findings highlighted by Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the archaeological park. The New York Times reports his study has "corroborated a theory that has slowly taken shape over the last 100 years": that life returned to the ruins, but that such traces "in many cases have been literally removed to reach the levels of 79 AD"—essentially, that the excavations to reach Pompeii as it was during that fateful eruption erased the signs of centuries of occupation.

But as Zuchtriegel explained in August in he E-Journal of the Excavations of Pompeii, artifacts that surfaced in digs in Insula Meridionalis, the southern quarter of Pompeii's ancient urban center indicate that some survivors, joined by newcomers, settled among the top-floor remnants of buildings that jutted out of the ash. "Judging by the archaeological data, it must have been an informal settlement where people lived in precarious conditions," the AFP quotes archaeologists as saying.

Coins and objects dating from the second to fifth centuries AD—the city was abandoned for good at that latter date, perhaps because of a 472 AD eruption—confirm that this improvised community persisted for centuries, even as living conditions were harsh and infrastructure was largely gone.