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

(Work)shop-houses Almost all (work)shop-houses have fixed cooking installations. 44
Most (work)shop-houses also contain supplementary kitchen equipment (braziers, tripods,
terracotta cooking stands, cauldrons, skillets and casseruole), storage vessels (amphorae and dolia)
and serving and eating wares (bowls, plates and cups). Nearly all have a single well-defined
cooking area that served the workers and residents of the building; (work)shop-houses are as
well equipped as small houses.
Notable kitchens and cooking assemblages appear in five (work)shop-houses. I.6.7, a
large fullonica installed in an existing atrium-peristyle house, has an extremely well-preserved
kitchen (m) with metal grills, pots and pans found hanging in situ from the wall above the stove
(Figs. 1.1, 5.56). Pots sat on their tripods over the stove-top, and storage and cooking wares were
stacked near the foot of the stove. Moeller correctly asserts that the kitchen indicates a
substantial part, if not all, of the staff living on the premises. 45 The kitchen was intended to cook
large evening meals, not to warm up breakfasts or lunches. I.7.5 has a small stove shaded by a
roof at the edge of its central court (c); this cooking area also contains a brazier, ceramic cooking
vessels, and a mortar (Figs. 5.75-5.76). A cauldron and casseruola are stored in an adjacent room.
The assemblage amply services the one dining room in this, the smallest (work)shop-house.
I.7.18 has an architecturally-defined kitchen (e) with a large stove upon which two ceramic
cooking stands and other vessels were found (Figs. 5.100-5.101). 46 The largest kitchen is I.8.10
(9), containing a large solid masonry stove, more than sufficient to serve the one small dining
area (Fig. 5.119). Finally, the small stove in corridor (4) of I.9.9 was found with a quantity of
bronze and ceramic pots, cups, plates and utensils (Fig. 5.145).
Commercial eating establishments The sample contains a single bakery (I.4.12-17)
outfitted with a large oven, a small oven (for pastries?), mills for grinding, basins for washing the
grain, and benches/counters for working the dough (Figs. 5.12, 5.39). Storage containers are
sunk into the ground in one of the shops (at #17) that face the street, and the products of the
bakery were probably sold from another (at #15-16). It is not certain whether the business baked
only its own bread, or whether it also rented out time to bake dough prepared and brought in by
individual households that lacked ovens at home.
Lunch counters, the smallest commercial eating establishments, show a fairly consistent
pattern to their cooking arrangements. In six of the seven lunch counters, a single hearth of sub-
44 Only the stable I.8.12, a stable yard with a small suite of rooms on the second floor behind the yard, has
no sure stove or hearth, but cookwares were found fallen from an upper floor. One (work)shop-house, I.6.8-
9, has two stoves, because the (work)shop is a diner.
45 Moeller 1976, 43.
46 See also PPM I, 742-743, #23-24.
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