Field, Mike H.

1. Introduction Major explosive eruptions are among the most unpredictable and serious natural hazards affecting human populations living near volcanoes, in particular during the pre-industrial era, when the nature of volcanism was not well understood. There has always been a fascination with the devastating impacts of volcanic eruptions, which were often attributed to actions of gods or demigods. Volcanoes were seen as the home of gods, whether in the classical world of Greece and the early Roman Empire, or in the Hawaiian and Māori mythologies in the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’. In the Age of Enlightenment, such interest led to the early development of volcanology as a branch of geology, with the first scientific observatory - the Vesuvius Observatory - being founded in 1841 by Ferdinand II, king of the Two Sicilies. Volcanological, geochemical and mineralogical...