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

participate in a meal, and how easily cooking areas can be supplied with foodstuffs purchased in
the city. Proximity (distance in meters) and accessibility (distance in terms of the number of
distinct spaces passed through) are discussed together because they provide parallel results,
being different measurements of the same phenomena. Only fixed cooking areas (i.e. kitchens
and hearths) in (work)shop-houses, diners and houses are included in the discussion. 207
There is an obvious and direct relationship between the size of a building and the
distances from the kitchen and dining area to the front entrance (see Table 3.5 below).
Building type Avg. distance,
fixed cooking
area to front
door
Avg. # of spaces
from fixed
cooking area to
front door
Avg. distance,
dining area to
front door
Diner 7.6 m. 2.9 9.6 m. 3.6
(Work)shop-house 12.5 m. 3.9 11.0 m. 4.0
Casa piccola 14.6 m. 5.1 15.3 m. 5.0
Casa media 18.0 m. 4.9 20.7 m. 5.5
Casa grande 27.3 m. 6.2 32.8 m. 6.3
166
Avg. # of spaces
from dining area
to front door
Table 3.5: Comparison of the average distance and average number of spaces to the front door of
a building from fixed cooking areas and dining areas according to building category. Distance to
the entrance increases as building size increases, and cooking areas are located slightly closer to
the front door than are dining areas.
This suggests that large houses are essentially expanded or stretched-out versions of smaller
houses, and the basic layout and relationships between cooking and dining areas remains stable
even as the distances increase between them.
Kitchens are consistently located slightly closer to the front entrance (in distance and
number of spaces) than dining areas (see Table 3.5 above). The difference is not large, and is
probably due to the fact that (in houses) fixed cooking areas are rarely located at the very back of
a building, but dining areas often are, as they face onto a back garden or peristyle, far from the
front door. 208 In diners, hearths are usually located at the front of the building, where they can
serve customers on the street and in the dining area behind.
Guests who attended dinners at larger houses had to penetrate further inside in order to
dine. In the casa piccola, there was a single dining area, near the atrium. In the casa media, there
207 Portable braziers and cooking stands could be moved anywhere cooking was needed. (Work)shops and
lunch counters do not contain both distinct kitchens or dining areas, and are not discussed. In (work)shops,
the distance between cooking and dining areas was essentially negligible; customers of lunch counters are
assumed to have eaten at the counter or on the street.
208 (Work)shop-houses do not seem to conform to this trend, because kitchen (m) in the Fullonica di
Stephanus I.6.7 is located in the back corner of the house, far from the dining area (g) off the atrium, and the
high figure of its distance from the front entrance skews the average. If this (work)shop-house is removed
from the data, the average distance from fixed cooking areas to the door drops to 9.8 m.; dining areas remain
steady at 11.1 m. from the door, and the pattern holds.