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

(I.4, VII.1, IX.1-2) began with their street frontage along the Via Stabiana in 1846-1849, continued
from 1851-1859, and was completed under the eyes of Fiorelli in 1861-1872. 6 Excavations
completed by Spinazzola, Elia, Della Corte and Maiuri in the period ca. 1911-1918, 1923-1935
(insulae I.6-7, 10) generally provide the highest quality data available. 7 Good records of finds
from these latter insulae allowed Allison to study assemblages from many of the houses. The
insulae (I.8), excavated by Maiuri from 1937-1941, and (I.9), also under Maiuri from 1951-1954,
were never properly published. However, Castiglione Morelli del Franco & Vitale (I.8) and Berry
(I.9) have recently begun to resolve this gap with their own works on the architecture and finds.
The six insulae in Regio I were selected for inclusion in the Gazetteer and analysis in chapter three
because of the higher degree of care and detail with which they were excavated and published.
At Pompeii (and also Herculaneum), I visited and studied other buildings outside the
sample areas, to check if the sample seemed reasonably representative of the Campanian
evidence (Fig. 2.1). These buildings are not included in the Gazetteer, but some are referred to in
the main text. 8 The cooking and dining areas in the comparanda did follow the general patterns
seen in the sample houses, and I have concluded that the sample is fairly representative of
Pompeii. I do not claim any statistical significance to the sample, for three reasons: 1) the sample
was not selected at random, 2) the excavated area of the towns (the available body of data) is not
a random sample, and 3) the evidence from the buildings at the time of excavation was not
recorded in a consistent or thorough manner. Nonetheless, patterns emerging from the sample
will offer interesting hypotheses to test in future investigations of larger urban environments.
The Pompeian evidence
Recent comprehensive publications of domestic architecture, decoration, inscriptions, and
finds have made synthetic studies of Pompeii possible. An ideal example is the Häuser in Pompeji
series, which brings together all classes of evidence for individual houses. 9 A separate
computerized reconstitution of architecture, finds, and decoration in select Pompeian houses was
part of a recent Italian project, and the premise holds great promise for non-destructive
archaeology of the future. 10 On a larger scale, the ongoing publication of a encyclopedic series
6 Records of these excavations appear in thePAH II, the BdI and BAN for the relevant years, and Fiorelli's
own Giornale, summed up in his work of 1873.
7 Notices in the NSc and monographs (Spinazzola I-III and Maiuri 1933) were the publications.
8 At Pompeii, these comparanda included: I.2.6, I.11.10-14, I.13.2, II.2.2, II.3.1-3, II.4, III.4.2-3. III.2.1, V.4.B,
V.3.10, V.2.1, V.2.10, V.1.2, V.1.7, VI.1.10, VI.2.4, VI.8.5, VI.8.22, VI.8.23, VI.9.2, VI.9.6-7, VI.10.7, VI.11.9-10,
VI.12.2+5, VI.15.1, VII.4.48, IX.9.2, IX.9.6, IX.13.1-3, and IX.14.A-C. At Herculaneum the comparanda
included all but those buildings too unsafe to enter (V.14-16, V.8).
9 Six volumes have so far been published in the Häuser series, and several more volumes are in progress; see
Ling 1993 for a review of Bds. 2-3.
10 The project is entitled the Consorzio Neapolis; see Rediscovering Pompeii 1990, 3-25, 63-77, 105-127,
Pompei - L'Informatica 1988 (the official publication), and Allison 1992b, 22-23.
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