SHORT SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION Impact of explosive volcanic eruptions around Vesuvius: a story of resilience in Roman time Claudio Scarpati 1 & Annamaria Perrotta 1 & Girolamo Ferdinando De Simone 2 Received: 18 December 2015 /Accepted: 21 February 2016 # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 Abstract Large explosive eruptions have reshaped the landscape around Vesuvius many times in prehistoric and historical times. Previous stratigraphic surveys sug- gested that people living in this area have probably abandoned their settlements (in the Bronze Age) or towns and villas (in the Roman period) for centuries after each major plinian eruption. New archaeological excavations on the northern slope of Vesuvius suggest a much more intriguing scenario. At Pollena Trocchia, an ongoing excavation has shown the superimposition of three different Roman structures, sandwiched between the deposits of the AD 79, AD 472, and AD 512 Vesuvius eruptions. Each of these eruptions more or less completely destroyed and buried the buildings under meters of volcanic products. Surprisingly, after a few years or decades, a new settlement was established ex- actly on the top of the buried one, indicating the imme- diate recovery of part of the devastated area. Our re- search documents the destruction of Roman buildings by volcanic eruptions over a period of five centuries (first to sixth century AD) and provides new insight into human behavior after major explosive eruptions. Keywords Ve su v iu s . Plinian and subplinian eruptions . Roman bath . Pollena Trocchia . Destruction of Roman settlements . Human resilience Introduction Hundreds of millions of people live close to active vol- canoes around the world (Small and Naumann 2001), remaining there on the basis of a delicate balance that inherently considers benefits (fertile soils, raw materials, geothermal sources) and risks. Highly explosive and low-frequency events such as plinian and subplinian eruptions erupt cubic kilometers of magma emplaced as pyroclastic material (pumice, scoria, ash) accumulated in thick blankets around the volcanic vents. The vio- lence of the emplacement mechanisms (e.g., fall or py- roclastic currents) and the sudden burying of the land- scape make these types of eruptions extremely danger- ous, and able to wipe out whole towns (such as Pompeii and Herculaneum in Italy) or prehistoric civili- zations (e.g., the Thera eruption in Greece). Why people decide to confront such a dramatic scenario is difficult to answer, but new archaeological excavations around Vesuvius shed light on other important questions: do frequently erupting active volcanoes produce an area without settlements within the boundaries of a previous- ly destroyed zone? And, if they initially do, how quick- ly do people come back to their original settlements? The fertile plain around Vesuvius has been inhabited since the prehistoric age (Albore Livadie 2010) (Fig. 1). Several plinian and subplinian explosive eruptions have occurred in the last 22 thousand years (supplementary materials). Bronze Age villages were buried at 14 and 29 km from Vesuvius under pyroclastic and other Editorial responsibility: J.D.L. White Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00445-016-1017-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Claudio Scarpati claudio.scarpati@unina.it 1 Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, dell’Ambiente e delle Risorse, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy 2 St. John’ s College, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3JP, UK Bull Volcanol (2016) 78:21 DOI 10.1007/s00445-016-1017-4 this claudio.scarpati@unina.it contact please copy personal a want you if paper, copyrighted a is