Since 1995, Petrone and Mastrolorenzo have roved the countryside of Campania, the region that surrounds Naples, a bit like the archaeological version of storm chasers, hustling to newly discovered excavation sites before the evidence can be removed or covered up. They have pieced together an anthropological and volcanological picture of the Avellino eruption—from thousands of fleeing footsteps of its victims, preserved in volcanic ash, to a spectacularly preserved prehistoric village (since dismantled) that was practically abandoned with dinner on the table—that has redefined the volcanic might and environmental toll of Vesuvius. They have not only given eloquent voice to the skeletons of San Paolo Bel Sito, but their enterprising research has turned that voice into a stark warning: Beware, modern Naples and surroundings, with your three million inhabitants, because an eruption of this magnitude is likely to happen again, and perhaps (in geologic time) very soon.

Ancient peoples gravitated to the plain of Campania for the same reasons we do today: clement weather, access to the sea (and sea-food) at the present-day Gulf of Naples, fertile volcanic soil, and perhaps even the beauty that has captivated writers from Virgil to Stendhal. Long before Aeneas returned from his travels, more than a thousand years before Greeks settled in Cumae and ruled the Campanian plain, prehistoric settlers came down out of the nearby Apennines and began to tame the land, growing cereal crops and tending flocks.

Later the Greeks moved east from Cumae to Neapolis, the New City, a little farther along the coast where modern Naples now stands. We have a very good idea what life in this sun-splashed land was like during the Roman era because of the recovered splendor of Pompeii and Herculaneum. But as the well-trod earth of Campania continues to yield ancient secrets, Mastrolorenzo and Petrone, with their colleague Lucia Pappalardo, have put together a rich view of an earlier time and what may have been humankind's first encounter with the primal force of Vesuvius.

Almost all has come to light by chance. In May 2001, for example, construction workers began digging the foundation for a supermarket next to a desolate, weed-strewn intersection just outside the town of Nola. An archaeologist working for the province of Naples noticed several traces of burned wood a few feet below the surface, an indication of earlier human habitation. At 19 feet (6 meters) below, relicts of a perfectly preserved Early Bronze Age village began to emerge.