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Historian Steven Tuck in The Conversation, PBS series, on Pompeii: The search for survivors and their stories

The search for survivors of Pompeii and their stories has dominated the past decade of Tuck’s archaeological fieldwork, Some of his findings are featured in an episode of the new PBS documentary, “Pompeii: The New Dig.”

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Steven Tuck at an archaeologic site near Pompeii
Steven Tuck in an image from the PBS series "POMPEII: The New Dig"
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Historian Steven Tuck in The Conversation, PBS series, on Pompeii: The search for survivors and their stories

Steven Tuck in an image from the PBS series "POMPEII: The New Dig"
Published •

On Aug. 24, in A.D. 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted, shooting more than 3 cubic miles of debris up to 20 miles (32.1 kilometers) in the air. As the ash and rock fell to Earth, it buried the ancient cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. According to most modern accounts, the story pretty much ends there: Both cities were wiped out, their people frozen in time, writes Steven Tuck, professor of History, in an article for The Conversation. 

“But recent research has shifted the narrative. The story of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius is no longer one about annihilation; it also includes the stories of those who survived the eruption and went on to rebuild their lives,” Tuck writes. 

“The search for survivors and their stories has dominated the past decade of my archaeological fieldwork, as I’ve tried to figure out who might have escaped the eruption. Some of my findings are featured in an episode of the new PBS documentary, ‘Pompeii: The New Dig.’”

After eight years of scouring databases of tens of thousands of Roman inscriptions on places ranging from walls to tombstones, Tuck found evidence of more than 200 survivors in 12 cities. “It seems as though most survivors stayed as close as they could to Pompeii. They preferred to settle with other survivors, and they relied on social and economic networks from their original cities as they resettled,” he writes. 

Read Tuck’s article  “Records of Pompeii’s survivors have been found — and archeologists are starting to understand how they rebuilt their lives” in The Conversation (June 7).

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