KITCHENS AND DINING ROOMS AT POMPEII ... - Get a Free Blog

(Work)shops (Work)shops are the only building category that contain units without
physical evidence for cooking. The small size of these properties prohibits setting aside space for
a separate kitchen; cooking was done in multi-purpose rooms. Even cooking vessels are absent
in the smallest single-room shops. 37 Of the twenty-one workshops, only one stove and one
hearth were probably used exclusively for food preparation (Figs. 5.26, 5.73). 38 More
circumstantial evidence is present in seven other (work)shops. There are fixed hearths in two
(work)shops, and they serve a small officina lanifricaria and a blacksmith respectively; it is possible
that those hearths doubled as places to cook the residents' food. 39 Evidence for cooking on site in
five other (work)shops consists exclusively of portable equipment such as cooking stands, tripods
and vessels. Two appear to have been in the business of making, repairing or selling metal
wares. 40 Three (work)shops have fairly secure artifactual evidence for on-site food preparation:
a terracotta fornello (brazier, cooking stand) in I.4.18, a bronze cauldron in I.4.19, and a collection
of ceramic mixing bowls, amphorae, plates and other vessels in I.10.5-6. The remainder, twelve
(work)shops, have no evidence for cooking or eating. 41 In sum, nearly half of the (work)shops
have the apparatus to prepare meals on a daily basis. 42 If self-sufficiency in food preparation
equals full-time residency in a building, then evidence for cooking may measure which shops
were inhabited and which were occupied only during 'business hours'. 43 The latter would have
been staffed by slaves or freedpersons who lived and ate in their master's house.
37 This is not to say that fixed cooking installations never appear in one-room shops. Outside the sample,
(work)shop IX.1.27 has a small one-arched stove, with a niche shrine above, and a niche for a bed or couch
in the space underneath the stairway to the loft above. This example is unique in the ten city blocks that I
examined personally.
38 I.4.4 (ST), used perhaps to cook food for a lunch-counter at I.4.3, to which it was connected by a large
window; I.7.4 (HE and a tripod).
39 The officina lanifricaria (I.4.27); the blacksmithy (I.6.1).
40 I.6.3, I.6.10 (see Gralfs 1988 for detailed lists of the evidence in I.6.3). It is unclear whether the wares found
in these (work)shops (clustered in insula I.6 along the Via dell'Abbondanza) were used for cooking and
eating on site, or if they were simply part of the (work)shops' inventories.
41 Knowledge about cooking artifacts from seven (work)shops is lacking because these properties were
excavated without care in recording and publication: I.4.8, I.4.10, I.4.20-21, I.4.7, I.4.23-24, I.7.15, I.7.17.
42 Of twenty-one (work)shops, nine (43%) have evidence for cooking. Removing the seven (work)shops for
which no artifactual evidence has been published, the percentage rises to 64%.
43 Scholars of medieval and ancient societies have often linked the definition of a domestic group, or
'houseful' to its common use of cooking facilities. So Wallace-Hadrill 1994, 92: "...the symbol of its (the
medieval houseful's) unity is the place of common food preparation, the fuoco, just as the lares above the
hearth symbolize the unity of the Roman household."
129