Penelope M. Allison - Böcker

This book contains catalogues, analyses, photographs and drawings of some 2,000 archaeological artefacts excavated from the Insula of the Menander in Pompeii. The catalogues, and analyses are organized by provenance - buildings, rooms, and location within rooms - so that the reader can understand the artefacts as household assemblages. The functions of artefacts and groups of artefacts are discussed, as are the Latin names which are often given to these artefacts, and the relationships of these assemblages to the state of occupancy of the buildings in the Insula during the last years of Pompeii. This study, therefore, provides a wealth of information, not only on the range and use of artefacts in Pompeian houses but also on Roman artefacts, and Roman society, more generally.

Studies of Pompeian material culture have traditionally been dominated by art-historical approaches, but recently there has been a renewed and burgeoning interest in Pompeian houses for studies of Roman domestic behavior. This book is concerned with contextualized Pompeian household artifacts and their role in deepening our understanding of household behavior at Pompeii. It consists of a study of the contents of thirty so-called atrium houses in Pompeii to investigate the spatial distribution of household activities, both within each architectural room type and across the house. It also uses this material to investigate the state of occupancy of these houses at the time of the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in AD 79. It thus examines artifact assemblages within their spatial and decorative contexts for a more material cultural approach to these remains and for the information which they provide on living conditions in Pompeii during the last decades. In this it takes a critical perspective the textual nomenclature which is traditionally applied to Pompeian room types.

This study uses artefact distribution analyses to investigate the activities that took place inside early Roman imperial military bases. Focusing especially on non-combat activities, it explores the lives of families and other support personnel who are widely assumed to have inhabited civilian settlements outside the fortification walls. Spatial analyses, in GIS-type environments, are used to develop fresh perspectives on the range of people who lived within the walls of these military establishments, the various industrial, commercial, domestic and leisure activities in which they and combat personnel were involved, and the socio-spatial organisation of these activities and these establishments. The book includes examples of both legionary fortresses and auxiliary forts from the German provinces to demonstrate that more material-cultural approaches to the artefact assemblages from these sites give greater insights into how these military communities operated and demonstrate the problems of ascribing functions to buildings without investigating the full material record.