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

offers a comprehensive, insula by insula photographic record of nearly all frescoes and
pavements, and is becoming the definitive reference work to the city. 11
All classes of evidence at Pompeii are considered in this thesis: architecture, art and
decoration, graffiti, and finds. Architecture survives best; all buildings at the time of my
inspection had been largely cleared of vegetation and some of their architecture had been
consolidated. 12 Other types of evidence are problematic. The brilliant frescoes which once
adorned many walls are gone; some were removed at the time of excavation to the Naples
Museum, and others have since faded from sight. Many floors have been covered over with a
layer of gray lava chips, and are not visible. Statuary and furniture have, in most cases, been
removed from the buildings. Graffiti and dipinti give tantalizing but largely unreliable clues to
the identities and social status of the owners or occupants of some buildings. 13 Finds for
approximately 30% of the sample houses have been published in detail. 14
Connecting patterns in the archaeological data with patterns of domestic behavior is a
challenge; Pompeian households and their houses were messy, continuously being rebuilt, and
reorganized or reused according to the many variables outlined in chapter one. As Berry has
stated, "...change is a normal part of domestic life and...the use of space in the home is always a
developing phenomenon." 15 She argues that "rebuilding is renewing the environment", and that
the A.D. 62 earthquake did not prevent most Pompeians from continuing their domestic lives. 16
Allison has offered an opposing view, stressing the widespread abandonment and
dilapidation of residences in the years between A.D. 62-79. She assumes that kitchens lacking
cooking vessels were not operating in A.D. 79, and that such houses were abandoned or reduced
in occupation. 17 Allison argues that cooking wares were not valuable enough to have been either
saved by fleeing householders, or recovered later by survivors. If kitchens were being used, then
11 Pompeii: Pitture e Mosaici (PPM I-IV); Regiones I-VI are available. This series is the partial publication of a
comprehensive list of photographic evidence for all regions of Pompeii published in the three volumes of:
Pitture e Pavimenti di Pompei (PPP I-III).
12 This process of cleaning and restoration began in the mid-1980s as a result of the 1980 earthquake and
continues today, with the inevitable but necessary alteration of the monuments themselves. See
Rediscovering Pompeii 1990, 11 and Progetto Pompei 1988.
13 Common names for houses in the samples rely largely on Della Corte's (1954) assignation of individuals
and families to various buildings, but I have avoided using epigraphic evidence as positive proof of
residents' identities. Castrèn (1975) and Mouritsen (1988) have shown that neither Della Corte's methods
nor his results can be substantiated. See also Lepore 1950.
14 Finds were available from twenty-two of the seventy-five sample houses: I.4.5+25 (Dwyer 1982); I.6.4,
I.6.8-9; I.6.11, I.6.13, I.6.15, I.7.7, I.7.10-12, I.7.19, I.10.4, I.10.7, I.10.8, I.10.11 (Allison 1992b); the nine houses of
I.9 (Berry 1993). Allison (1992b) and Berry (1993) have pioneered the reconstruction of domestic contexts for
artifactual assemblages. Allison (pp. 12-39) gives an account of the problems in such reconstructions.
15 Berry 1993, 4.
16 Berry 1994.
17 Allison 1992b, 92-93. But see Berry 1993, 80-83.
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