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T The paper addresses the long-lasting human presence on the island of Stromboli, an active volcano at the northern edge of the Aeolian archipelago, in the Southern Tyrrhenian sea, Italy. A conceptual model has been built to explore the phenomenon, it takes into account a series of aspects comparing Stromboli to other islands: their morphology, natural resources and geography along with the archaeological and historical data and, further, human attitude to volcanic environments, to risk and to insularity has been deeply explored. We propose a complex narrative where a combination of geological, socio-economic, historical, and psychological factors influenced people’s choices and that human presence is related more to the volcanic (and island) environment (and opportunities) than to volcanic activity.

In 79 A.D. Vesuvius buried entire cities in a few days under a blanket of pumice and ashes. It was a sudden event, which occurred after centuries of inactivity, heralded only by earthquakes that repeated periodically, for many years, creating addiction rather than alarm. After the event, the vegetation covered the volcanic products, and the memory of the disaster was lost. The first excavations began in Herculaneum in 1738 and in Pompeii ten years later, in times when archeology still did not exist. Much was destroyed, given away, thrown away. Almost intact buildings emerged, with all their contents, with many inhabitants caught on the run. The arduous process of recovering the sites has had important and not always happy stages, accompanied by continuous progress in the excavation methods. Volcanology has drawn from those experiences as much as it could, setting itself the goal of reconstructing the story of an explosive eruption, the first in the world to be described, by Pliny the Younger, the one that most left its mark on buildings, vegetation, animals and humans. Without the eruption, Pompeii and Herculaneum would have disappeared. The details on how the romans lost their lives in the tragedy is an important component to be offered to Pompeii’s visitors and that is at present largely imperfect. Knowing it and reconstructing its impact on people and the territory, going beyond the archaeological site, is an experience of the past and a warning for today and for the future.

The lava platform and the three pyroclastic cones of Vulcanello constitute the northernmost volcanic structure of the island of Vulcano (Aeolian Islands). The sandy isthmus connecting the platform to the main island was definitively formed in the first half of the 1500s; before then, Vulcano and Vulcanello were two close but separate islands. For a long time, the interpretation of the sources of the II-I century BC, had considered the islet as built up about 2200 years ago. This belief, which proliferated among naturalists from the 17th century, is not confirmed in the ancient texts or even in the geographical documents of the time, which do not indicate the presence of Vulcanello as a new and stable island near Vulcano. The islet would only be mentioned at the dawn of the second millennium, and named in Arabic “Gabal’ al Burkān”, meaning Mount of Vulcano; shortly thereafter the toponym changed to the Latin “Insulam Vulcanelli” and then, towards the 15th century, finally to Vulcanello. Since the creation of a volcanic island certainly occurred in the Aeolian Islands in the classical era, but traces of it were quickly lost, the most plausible hypothesis is that it was formed in the area of the current Vulcanello, to be subsequently erased by the sea. The shallow, flat seabed, likely remaining as a result of sea abrasion, might have represented the morphological element on which the circular lava platform we know today was formed sometime between 950 and 1000 AD.