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

oom for storage space -- cooking and serving wares are usually found outside of the kitchen
proper. A terracotta bowl and cup sitting on the stove in I.10.18 (9) are the only finds known to
be directly associated with a stove in the kitchen of a casa piccola. 56
Casa media These have a single fixed cooking area. 57 The kitchens are no larger on
average (7.7 m 2 ) than kitchens in case piccole (7.6 m 2 ), even though the houses themselves are
twice as large. Instead of physically expanding the size or number of kitchens, owners simply
added portable cooking appliances to modulate the cooking capacity and to be able to move
cooking where it was needed. Eight of eighteen houses have supplementary portable devices
(braziers, tripods, water heaters and cooking supports) that expand the total number of possible
cooking areas to three. Portable cooking devices can be divided into two groups -- those
obviously stored away with other domestic artifacts in cupboards, chests or store-rooms, 58 and
those used where they were found (usually in or near a node such as an atrium or garden). 59
Nearly all braziers, tripods and water heaters were placed either in close vicinity to a dining area,
or in a nearby storage area whence they could easily be fetched. The casa media had increased
flexibility and options in deciding where and how much to cook.
Medium-sized houses contain a wide variety of fixed cooking appliances, including
stoves of sub-types (1), (2) and (3), and hearths of sub-types (1), (2) and (4). Solid and arched
masonry stoves, being the largest and most common cooking installations, are found only in
distinct, architecturally defined kitchens. Three of the four smallest case medie do not have
kitchens, but allotted space for hearths or sub-type (3) stoves in an atrium (I.6.13-14) or in
corridors (I.9.12, I.10.8). 60 Case piccole set aside space for separate kitchens, so the issue is not a
lack of ground area. The answer lies in the proximity of cooking to dining. All three of these
cooking areas are practically adjacent to the dining room, even within range of smell, which (see
below) is relatively rare. Ease of serving dinner determines the placement of the cooking area.
Assemblages of cooking wares and cooking devices were closely associated with stoves
in four examples. 61 Those exemplary assemblages provide a sense of how a typical kitchen may
have been outfitted. Found at each site was at least one auxiliary cooking device, i.e. a tripod,
brazier or grill, over which other pots might be placed for cooking. Other pots included: bronze
56 From a photo in PPM II, 502, #4.
57 I.9.3-4 has one hearth fixed to its attached counter; another possible fixed cooking area is located in room
(10), where some stub walls that could be stove supports are visible, but the room has not been completely
excavated and the room cannot be securely identified as a kitchen.
58 Portable cooking devices stored away: I.6.15 (g), I.8.17+11 (19), I.9.5-7 (9), I.10.7 (3), in a chest.
59 Portable cooking devices perhaps in use where they were found: I.6.15 (l), I.9.1-2 (2), I.9.5-7 (2), I.9.13-14
(o), I.10.7 (10), I.10.10-11 (9).
60 One other possible cooking area (I.9.5-7 (16)) was located along a corridor.
61 I.6.4 (n), I.7.7 (i), I.9.13-14 (b), I.10.7 (11).
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