Abstract This research was stimulated by the need to extend in time the record of Italy's largest earthquakes, which commonly have repeat times of the same order as the length of the available historical record. As a test case we used the 1908 Straits of Messina earthquake, a large event that geologists assume to recur at intervals of roughly a millennium but whose predecessors are as yet unknown. The 1908 earthquake caused enormous territorial upheaval and left signs in the settlements that are still largely recognizable today. We hypothesized that the Straits of Messina, which were densely populated even in ancient times, may similarly retain evidence of one or more much older ‘upheavals’ of the settlement network, and that this evidence may be recognized through a careful analysis of archaeological observations. We found evidence that the settled area around the Straits of Messina contracted substantially around the middle of the fourth century AD, when many sites were abandoned or relocated. This contraction can hardly be justified by the then current economic and military setting. Specific archaeological findings within the cities of Messina and Reggio Calabria also suggest a serious decline of the region during the same period. The archaeological hypothesis is in good agreement with the available historical and palaeoseismological evidence and suggests that a large earthquake, perhaps similar to the 1908 event, took place in the area surrounding the Straits of Messina around the middle of the fourth century AD .