The impact of the Pomici di Avellino Plinian eruption of Vesuvius on Early and Middle Bronze Age human settlement in Campania (Southern Italy)

Abstract

Summary The systematic revision and re-examination of the archaeological data, available for the Palma Campania facies sites (Early Bronze Age) – in the Campania region (southern Italy), allowed an estimation of the territorial impact of the Vesuvius Pomici di Avellino eruption (2oth–19th century B. C.). Before the eruption the Campania region was densely inhabited, as testified by the discovery of numerous villages and cultivated fields, evidence of a considerable level of socio-economic organization. The Pomici di Avellino eruption had a very strong impact on a large area, striking both the Campanian Plain and the surrounding Apennine Mountains. Volcanological and archaeological studies have shed light upon the local effects of this eruption, and allow us to reconstruct the variable phases of reoccupation of the ravaged territories. A careful reappraisal of the reports regarding the Early and Middle Bronze Age sites, evidenced a protracted period of depopulation of the area affected by the by-products of the eruption. This phenomenon interested both the areas mantled only by fallout deposits and those covered by pyroclastic density currents deposits. A complete reoccupation of the area only occurred at the end of the Middle Bronze Age, about five centuries after the eruption. The local effects of the deposition of eruption products and the timing and dynamics of resettlement have been studied in detail for several selected sites, at which the impact of the eruption differed markedly, in corrispondence to their distance from the volcano (Nola- Croce del Papa; Afragola-Badagnano; Pratola Serra-Pioppi; Ariano Irpino-La Starza; Pompeii-St. Abbondio).