The beauty of being an archaeologist is having the good fortune to find something on an archaeological dig that remains in a relatively good state of preservation. In various degrees, there are those who study how nature can actually help the conservation of artifacts and buildings and those who study the natural agents of destruction, such as a particular pH in the soil, a series of floods of a river or other catastrophic events. Volcanic eruptions may well have wiped out entire civilizations, but conversely, the ash and soot produced by them are particularly good at allowing the preservation of ancient artifacts and further, deposits of soot often make it possible to identify the time of a particular eruption, even thousands of miles away from the actual volcano crater.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original content at https://www.worldhistory.org/article/460/prodigies-earthquake-perception-from-julius-to-laq/.