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

adoperato per cucina o per dispensa, accessibile solo dall'esterno del balcone". 50 He offers no
evidence that the space was actually used for cooking.
The house appears to have been under restoration before it was covered with debris and
rendered uninhabitable. Garden (13) was painted in the 4th style, a pile of sand was found in (5)
and a pile of lime in (7), evidence of renovation material. De Vos (PPM I, PPP I) dates the garden
painting to before A.D. 62, and a coin of Nero dating to A.D. 60 (or 65) was found amongst the
restoration building material; these data suggest that ongoing work at the house was perhaps
interrupted by the earthquake of A.D. 62, which caused this house to collapse upon itself, the
rubble of its walls forming a deposit of ca. 1.5 m. thick in the atrium. The severity of the damage
apparently ended the renovation and the occupation of the house. 51 Limited habitation
continued, if anywhere, in the upper floor rooms reached from #14, if Maiuri is correct in
assuming the entrance was installed only after A.D. 62. Maiuri's evidence for this dating is based
however on his expectation that residences were subdivided in the post-earthquake period, not
on any direct physical evidence. The scattered finds (coins, weaving implements, lamps and
small vessels) found mixed in the rubble collapse (and almost exclusively in rooms along the
street) can either be interpreted as refuse discarded on the abandoned property by other
Pompeians, or evidence for humble occupation between A.D. 62-79. 52 The house lay essentially
abandoned for seventeen years; hence, the analysis of the cooking and dining facilities here must
consider the layout of the house prior to its renovation and subsequent collapse.
The basic layout of the house in the early first century A.D. begins at fauces (a), flanked by
two small rooms on the S side of atrium (b). The atrium has a HE in its SW corner (Figs. 2.14,
5.62); on the W, corridor (d) accesses shop (3), followed by DR•(4) (Fig. 5.62). Cubiculum (5) and
tablinum (6) comprise the range of rooms on the N, with corridor (e) leading to room (7) and
garden (13), with a wooden stair to the upper floor on the W. Further W along corridor (f) are a
cistern head that allows for water to be drawn directly from the upper floor, and three small
rooms (8-10) around a stair at (g). Allison mentions a latrine in (10). A small room (11) has a
small niched shrine in its W face, and (12) in the NW corner has a latrine in its SE corner and
50 Maiuri NSc 1929, 431: "A 'utility room', used for cooking or storage, acessible only from the outside via
the balcony".
51 Maiuri NSc 1929, 430 suggested that the house had been converted into a 'builder's yard' after the
earthquake, storing raw materials for the renovation of neighboring houses. Allison corrects him, noting
that the rubble collapse was not building material for re-use, but the material of the collapsed house that
buried the actual piles of sand and lime.
52 Allison 1992b, 259 suggests that the scattered finds belonged to the occupation of the upper floor of the
residence, and that they were caught in the collapse of the house at some point between A.D. 62-79.
However, her argument that undocumented tremors during those years may have been the cause of an
interim collapse is based on negative evidence.
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