Survivors of the volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii in A.D. 79 returned to the ash-covered Roman city in the centuries after the blast and lived on the upper floors of buildings, new excavations confirm.
They were likely joined by opportunists and destitute people from nearby towns who came to the ruins in search of valuables and a place to settle, archaeologists said. This new population, the size of which is still unknown, occupied the remains of Pompeii for approximately 400 years, or until the fifth century A.D., according to a translated statement from Pompeii Archaeological Park.
“Post-79, Pompeii re-emerges 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,” Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director general of the archaeological park in Pompeii and lead author of a report about the new findings published Aug. 6 in the E-Journal of the Excavations of Pompeii, said in the statement.
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