Abstract
The lavas produced by historically recorded eruptions of Mt Vesuvius, and the Herculaneum mudflow resulting from the AD 79 eruption have been investigated archaeomagnetically. The mudflow carries a magnetically hard remanence, the direction of which is significantly different from that of the present-day field, suggesting that the remanence is primary. The secular variation curve for Vesuvius agrees well with the Rome record and with other curves from Italy and London. A model for westward drift which accounts for certain features of secular variation in Europe over the past 200 yr requires a mean deceleration rate of 0.004 deg yr−2. This is less than the current rate, suggesting that the deceleration rate was smaller 200 yr ago than it is today.
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