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

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).