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

Whether or not all larger houses at Pompeii indeed sheltered larger and richer
households, "Pompeian housing...implies an expectation that households will vary enormously in
size". 157 C.M. Watts has demonstrated that "larger, more complex houses have greater number
and more variety of dynamic spaces serving various parts of the house." 158 An individual's
position along the socio-political spectrum should correlate to the degree of segmentation
expressed in that individual's own house. In other words, a larger house should have more
rooms and a more complex arrangement of those rooms than a smaller house. Most households
included an upper floor, and sometimes a subterranean level. Unfortunately, the state of the
evidence at Pompeii does not consistently permit the accurate calculation of upper-floor space for
each building, and not all underground rooms have been completely excavated. Land devoted to
horticultural use is also a distorting factor; small houses with exceptionally large gardens are less
complex and have less living space than properties of the same size with more roofed spaces. A
modified theorem therefore reads: 'properties with a larger, non-horticultural, ground area
generally had more rooms, were more complex and were more spatially differentiated than
similar properties with a smaller ground area.'
Watts has adapted the method of 'pattern language' to describe the design of houses at
Pompeii, Herculaneum and Ostia. 159 She divides spaces into two broad categories: 'dynamic'
and 'static'. 'Dynamic' spaces include 'connectors' (entryways, corridors and stairways), and
'nodes' (centers of activity and circulation such as atria, courts, gardens and peristyles) (Figs. 5.2-
5.7). 160 'Nodes' almost always include all space open to the sky in a building, except for light-
wells, whose functions are practical: to provide light, collect water, and circulate air, but not to
allow the circulation of persons. Nodes are usually centrally located within the house, and are a
focus of at least three other spaces. Nodes are multi-purpose -- they are centers of work and
administration within the house. 161 'Static' spaces include all other rooms in the house which are
each likely to have a specialized function (such as kitchens, dining areas, tablina, bedrooms and
157Wallace-Hadrill 1991b, 213.
158Watts 1987, 128. Kent 1990, 7 has stated a similar theorem on a larger scale: "there should be increasing
architectural partitioning and functionally restricted activity areas at later sites as the sociopolitical system
becomes more hierarchical and segmented or stratified."
159'Pattern language' is a programmatic language that C. Alexander (A Pattern language, New York, 1977)
and other researchers developed at Berkeley to generate built environments. It is a systemization of rules
applied to patterns and principles of architectural design, that defines and describes actual buildings (see
Watts 1987, 1-13).
160See the introduction to the Gazetteer in chapter five for further definition of these terms, and Watts 1987,
124-131.
161Berry 1994 has emphasized the multi-purpose and administrative role of nodes such as atria and
peristyles.
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