AFTER, THE ERUPTION

In popular culture, the sudden eruption of Mount Vesuvius is usually depicted as an apocalyptic event. Records of Pompeii's survivors have been found– and archaeologists are starting to understand how they rebuilt their lives

- Professor Steven L. Tuck

ON 24 AUGUST, IN 79 CE, Mount Vesuvius erupted, shooting over 12 cubic kilometres of debris up to 32 kilometres in the air. As the ash and rock fell to Earth, it buried the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

According to most modern accounts, the story pretty much ends there: both cities were wiped out, their people frozen in time.

It only picks up with the rediscovery of the cities and the excavations that started in earnest in the 1740s. But recent research has shifted the narrative. The story of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius is no longer one about annihilation; it also includes the stories of those who survived the eruption and went on to rebuild their lives.

The search for survivors and their stories has dominated the past decade of my archaeological fieldwork, as I've tried to figure out who might have escaped the eruption. Some of my findings are featured in an episode of the PBS documentary, Pompeii: The New Dig.

Making It Out Alive

Pompeii and Herculaneum were two wealthy cities on the coast of Italy just south of Naples. Pompeii was a community of about 30,000 people that hosted thriving industry and active political and financial networks. Herculaneum, with a population of about 5,000, had an active fishing fleet and a number of marble workshops. Both economies supported the villas of wealthy Romans in the surrounding countryside.

In popular culture, the eruption is usually depicted as an apocalyptic event with no survivors: in episodes of the TV series Doctor Who and Loki, everyone in Pompeii and Herculaneum dies. But the evidence that people could have escaped was always there.