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

casa grande could one dining area be spared for such unconventional coloration. 159 Certain
houses seem to have certain colors that appear prominently in nearly every dining area; I.4.5+25
uses yellow in the ground, socle, borders or panels, and white ground decoration is favored in
I.7.10-12. Large houses have far more 'up-to-date' painting than other buildings. Fourth style,
the most 'modern' of the Pompeian styles, appears in sixteen dining areas; three are of the third
style, and two are in the second style. 160 Wealthier owners of larger houses were more likely to
redecorate their homes to keep in tune with the fashion of the times, and could best afford to
(quickly) redecorate their rooms after the earthquake of A.D. 62 (when many of the fourth style
works were executed). Damaged decorations of an earlier style in dining areas of smaller houses
are often found patched to ensure structural stability, but not wholly redecorated. 161
Households without the means for restoring their decoration must simply have had to use rooms
in damaged condition.
Storage
Evidence for storage of cooking, serving and eating equipment (as introduced in chapter
one, pp. 14-16) relies either upon circumstantial evidence such as brackets for shelving cut in the
walls of certain rooms, or direct evidence such as the traces of chests or cupboards and the
artifacts associated with them. Unfortunately, the state of the evidence for finds is not consistent
between buildings. Excavated assemblages depend on whether the building was actually
occupied, to what extent the occupants were able to pack their belongings and escape during the
A.D. 79 eruption, and how severely the building was robbed out after the eruption by household
salvagers or looters. The quality of the modern excavations and the recording of artifacts in their
contexts also varies widely. These were the difficulties faced by Allison and Berry in their recent
and valuable efforts to reintegrate the architecture and artifacts of selected houses. 162 A
quantitative study cannot be made of the evidence from this study sample -- not even all of the
study sample can be included. I can offer, however, a sense of how some households and
businesses arranged the storage of their cooking, serving and eating wares.
A few trends will emerge. In smaller households, cooking and serving wares are found
close to or in the cooking areas; there is little space to store them elsewhere. Greater storage
capacity appears in larger households. Storage areas become more numerous and more spread
out through the house (even as the rooms themselves are no larger). Goods in these rooms tend
159 See Ling 1991b, 207-209, 234 (#9) for a summary of pigments, their sources, prices and uses in wall
painting.
160 Third style decoration: I.4.5+25 (19, 20); I.7.1 (16); second style decoration: I.6.2 [22] (not in use after
A.D. 62); I.7.10-12 (10).
161 Examples of dining areas in smaller houses that may have been used despite damaged or incomplete
decoration: I.6.4 (c?, p), I.6.15 (d), I.9.5-7 (13, 17), I.9.13-14 (d), I.10.8 (2).
162 Allison 1992b, Berry 1993.
153