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

a shed roof; perhaps a flue or chimney in the roof provided ventilation, although no identifiable
fragments of such a device were found.
Only one terracotta vase was recorded from the kitchen, but cooking wares were stored
elsewhere in the house. Against the W wall of the fauces (a) (perhaps fallen from the floor above)
was found a bronze cooking pot (olla). In the cupboard on the W side of the atrium, two bronze
casseruole were stored. The chest in the NE corner of the atrium held two more casseruole and two
colanders of bronze. The quantity of cooking vessels from the kitchen and the house is not large;
vessels and utensils seem to have been stored in cupboards in the atrium.
Installation amenities, dining areas: No finds were recorded from either DR◊(11) or DR◊(15),
but the remains of cupboards and chests throughout the house revealed a substantial selection of
stored cooking and eating vessels (Maiuri NSc 1929, 419-423, Allison). In the cupboard at the
center of the W wall of atrium (b) were found four elaborate silver cups with relief decoration,
two plates and two cups of bronze, and eighteen other serving and drinking vessels of glass and
terracotta. In the chest in the NE corner of the atrium were found two iron knives, and nine
other vessels of bronze and terracotta. A chest against the E wall of the atrium contained six
more bronze and terracotta vessels. Finally, three bronze jugs were found in a cupboard against
the S wall of room (10). This array of serving and dining wares was separated and stored away
in partial accordance to their function; the expensive silver vessels were all kept under the watch
of the bronze statue of Apollo in the cabinet on the W side of the atrium. Table settings were
brought out from their shelf space in the atrium only when dinner was ready, and then returned
to their places after they had been washed.
I) Decorative amenities, KI (8): This room had a shed roof, sloping down W towards the street, as
evidenced by five beam holes in the N wall. The floor is paved near the stove (itself faced with
opus signinum) with tiles in a diagonal pattern. Patches of plain plaster adhere to the wall in the
NE corner. At the N end of the W wall is a relieving arch in opus mixtum listatum (Fig. 2.19).
Decorative amenities, dining areas: DR◊(11) was found bereft of decoration; the room appears
by its size and aspect to have been designed as a dining room, but its function had changed by
the time of the eruption. At some point after the late 3rd style decoration had been applied to the
atrium and its surrounding rooms, a door was opened in the NE corner of this room connecting
to room (3); the position of this door would have interfered with any standard layout of dining-
couches and perhaps altered the use of DR◊(11). At a still later time, the entrance to (3) was
blocked up, but the room received no subsequent redecoration. DR•(15) received decoration of
the 3rd style (described above under 'Environmental Amenities'), after its wide window onto
garden (16) had been blocked.
J) Sanctity: At the top of a cupboard on the W side of atrium (b) was found an archaizing bronze
statuette of Apollo Philesios holding a small stag and a laurel branch in each hand. Allison 1992,
230