Initially the evidence for significant seismic disturbance at Pompeii appears to be overwhelming and conclusive, but scholars have recently begun to find signs of recovery and revitalization during the years between the earthquake(s) and the eruption (Dobbins 1994; Ling 2005; Poehler, this volume; Flohr, this volume). As a result, it seems increasingly unlikely that daily life stopped entirely because buildings had fallen down or due to the inconvenience caused by reconstruction. As anyone who has lived through the process of rebuilding or renovating a house can testify, it is entirely possible to coexist with and work around the (re)building process through minor (or major) adjustments and compromises.
There is nothing to suggest that the process of rebuilding would have been abnormal to most Pompeians. Living in an area of significant, if then relatively dormant, geological activity (Sigurdsson, et al. 1985), it would be rather more surprising if rebuilding and renovation after seismic damage were previously unknown to the city’s inhabitants. Indeed, both Seneca (Q Nat. 6.1) and Pliny the Younger (Ep. 6.20) reveal that the frequency of seismic difficulties in Campania was well known. Even without the external impetus of extensive seismic damage, normal wear and tear and changing architectural fashions would ensure that at any one time a number of houses in Pompeii would have been under construction, refurbishment or renovation. Certainly, recent excavation results indicate that renovation and rebuilding were a common aspect of daily life (Carafa and Alessio 1996; Fulford and Wallace-Hadrill 1996; Jones and Robinson 2005; Coarelli and Pesando 2006). The only differences during the period after AD 62 would have been the scale and omnipresence of the rebuilding effort, the relative demands on building resources and the economic burden placed on the city as a whole.
Indeed, the ways in which Pompeians chose to deal with the process of reconstruction ought to reveal a great deal about the priorities of particular house owners and the relative importance of various activities during the final period of the city’s life. It should be possible to distinguish between distributions of artifacts that suggest significant interruptions to daily activities and those that may provide evidence for their continuation. The fact of widespread destruction therefore need not preclude the use of Pompeian material culture to understand the inhabitants of the city. In order to do this, however, it is necessary to examine the precise effects of rebuilding activities on those people who had to work around them and the degree to which they presented an interruption. It is possible to gain this understanding through an examination of the ways in which these activities or their remains interacted with the architectural environment in which they were situated.
World History
