Footprints Reveal Ancient Escape From Vesuvius—1,800 Years Before Pompeii’s Destruction

Imagine starting routine maintenance on an underground pipeline—only to uncover thousands of years of history.

That’s exactly what happened to employees in Italy working on a methane pipeline south of Naples, near Pompeii. The subsequent excavation unearthed archaeological features ranging from the Bronze Age (3500 to 1200 BCE) to Late Antiquity (250 to 750 CE), as detailed in a social media post from the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the Provinces of Salerno and Avellino. The exceptional discoveries include potential evidence of humans and animals fleeing a Mount Vesuvius explosion over a thousand years before the one that buried the famous Roman city.

Mount Vesuvius blew its top in 79 CE, burying Pompeii and Herculaneum under layers of ash and pumice, famously preserving victims that capture their final moments. The volcano remains active today, with major eruptions happening every few hundreds of years, including a relatively bad one in 1944.

Archaeologists uncovered Bronze Age human and animal footprints in pyroclastic deposits (volcanic debris) originating from Vesuvius’ volcanic complex. The footprints “offer poignant testimony to the dramatic flight of the inhabitants in the face of the volcano’s fury,” reads the Superintendency’s social media post. It’s worth noting, however, that depending on how quickly the pyroclastic deposits solidified, humans and animals could have left the footprints months after the explosion.

The footprints might correspond to Mount Vesuvius’s Avellino pumice eruption, which scientists believe was more powerful than the 79 CE explosion, according to research published in 2006. The Avellino eruption, which occurred 3,780 years ago, began with an intense pumice fallout followed by pyroclastic surges that spread up to 15.5 miles (25 kilometers) from the volcano, burying the surrounding land and villages, according to the 2006 study. It served as an eerie precursor to the Roman-era eruption some 1,800 years later.

Indeed, the Bronze Age eruption wasn’t a strong enough omen to keep people away. Archaeologists found evidence of semicircular huts dating to the Bronze-Iron Age transition, sometime between 1200 and 900 BCE. They also uncovered a third- or second-century BCE religious sanctuary along a major road outside Nuceria Alfaterna, unearthing artifacts likely used as votive offerings.

Younger finds from the Roman period, including plow furrows and the ruins of what had probably been rural villas, testify to the region’s intense agricultural production and field cultivation in later years. The archaeologists were also able to reconstruct more than 40 roads around Nuceria Alfaterna, including some still bearing ruts from ancient wagon wheels.

Traces of the longhouses. © Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the Provinces of Salerno and Avellino via Facebook.

The excavations, which concluded in November, additionally revealed both Christian and pagan burials, such as child graves from the transition between the Roman Age and Late Antiquity, a monumental tomb with sarcophagus, and sepultures found in one of the Roman villas. These discoveries highlight the coexistence of different religions’ death rites, as well as the ancient practice of repurposing buildings.

Some of the youngest archaeological elements to emerge in the excavations date to the Late Antiquity period, and point to a return of the “longhouse” style habitation—long, narrow huts first built during European protohistory (the period between prehistory and modern history, with scant evidence of writing).

“This return to past housing patterns, probably due to socio-economic changes, testifies to the adaptability of human communities in the face of transformation,” the Superintendency concluded in the social media post.

So the next time you travel to Italy and inevitably want to complain about the country’s infrastructure, remember that thousands of years worth of archaeological material emerge (and limit construction work) every time someone even thinks about picking up a shovel.