Picking apart Pompeii

Anderson, Michael A. & Robinson, Damian. 2018. House of the Surgeon, Pompeii: excavations in the Casa del Chirurgo (VI 1, 9–10.23). Oxford: Oxbow; 978-1-78570-728-5 £70.

Poehler, Eric E.. 2017. The traffic systems of Pompeii. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 978-0-19-061467-6 £55.

Ellis, Steven J.R.. 2018. The Roman retail revolution. The socio-economic world of the taberna. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 978-0-19-876993-4 £65.

Flohr, Miko & Wilson, Andrew (ed.). 2016. The economy of Pompeii. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 978-0-19-878657-3 £95.

We begin with the House of the Surgeon (hereafter HotS), a report on the major excavations at one of the most famous parts of the city, conducted by the Anglo-American Project in Pompeii (AAPP) and led by the University of Bradford from 1994–2006. The project investigated a complete insula (city block), number VI 1, located just inside the Porto Ercolano gate, which opens onto the main road to Herculaneum. This volume, intended as the first in a series of publications that will eventually tell the story of the entire insula, focuses on a single house, the eponymous House of the Surgeon (Casa del Chirurgo), named for the surgical instruments recovered when it was initially excavated. The house was discovered in 1770 by a team of workmen under the direction of Francesco la Vega, and the structure, as it stood at the time of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, was revealed. As a result, the Bradford team were able to record the standing architecture as well as carry out sub-surface excavations, a relatively rare possibility at Pompeii where the incredible preservation of the last occupation layer means authorities are reluctant to sanction destructive archaeological work. The House of the Surgeon therefore provides “a window on the very forces of urban change in the city” (p. 16).

The volume is split into 14 chapters. Chapter 1 serves as a precursor to the series as a whole, introducing the main features of the insula and detailing the history of excavation and interest, dating back to the eighteenth century. Chapter 2 provides a thorough history of the AAPP itself, in which we learn of the debt owed to the British government minister David Mellor. In 1993, the soon-to-resign-in-disgrace Mellor wrote a typically impolite op-ed in The Guardian lamenting the state of Pompeii, prompting a response from the local authorities that resulted in the AAPP project. This chapter also details the scientific methods used, including the recovery of artefacts and ecofacts. Chapter 3 deals with the history of research on the House of the Surgeon itself, and particularly its role in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century debates on the Roman atrium house-type, a form of elite residence that was considered key to the understanding of domestic space. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with the stratigraphy of the house itself, firstly in summary (4) and then in a room-by-room treatment (5). This latter section runs for 300 pages and accounts for close to half of the volume. Maps and plans, as well as colour photographs, are used judiciously throughout. Chapters 6–13 are specialist reports on different aspects, including glass, coins, plaster, marble and mosaic remains, faunal and archaeobotanical data, fuel use and environmental reconstruction. Some of these are more comprehensive than others, but all present new data in a clear and intelligible fashion. The concluding chapter summarises the main achievements of the project, including a date of initial construction (around 200 BC, or just after) and the identification of successive phases of rebuilding and modification up until AD 79. One might have wished for the specialist reports to have been better integrated here as the focus is rather architectural. Overall, however, this is an excellent report, containing a wealth of new data expertly martialled, described and illustrated. A notable absence is a report on the pottery recovered, a result of the death of a key specialist involved in the analysis, but this will be rectified by later publications.

Our second volume examines interactions at a city-wide scale. The traffic systems of Pompeii (hereafter TSP) makes use of the exceptional preservation of material remains in the fabric of the AD 79 city to investigate the movement of vehicles around the city. Modern visitors to Pompeii are often struck by the deep ruts worn into road surfaces by repeated movement of wheeled vehicles. Less well known are the more than 600 marks on vertical faces of street architecture, including curb stones, stepping stones and guard stones, which, importantly, can give us vital information on the direction of travel. Building on this evidence base, and bringing in further evidence from literary sources and other archaeological sites, Eric Poehler attempts to reconstruct the ways in which wheeled vehicles must have moved around the city. In such a large and complex network, however, movement required rules, and in articulating the relationship between daily practices, local government interventions and management, Poehler is also able to make statements about the role of central authorities in Roman urbanism.

After a brief introduction that sets out this relationship, Chapter 2 presents a concise but very useful overview of the growth of the Pompeian street system, a broadly north–south-orientated grid, the majority of which dates to the so-called masterplan, instituted around 300 BC. Chapters 3–5 deal with different aspects of the material remains, from street surface types to vertical stones such as curbs, and the evidence for traffic left as marks. Chapter 6 brings this all together to address some of the rules of the system. Poehler is able to demonstrate the existence of two-way and one-way streets, and argues that the Pompeian drivers drove on the right, or, where possible, in the middle of the road. Some things do not change. Chapter 7 takes an innovative approach, using first-person narratives of three journeys by a fictional mulio (cart driver), Sabinus, followed by scholarly commentaries to elucidate what travelling around the city might actually have been like. I found this chapter extremely effective at conveying how the city might have functioned. Archaeological evidence for the material culture described in the short vignettes is cited through footnotes. This approach subtly allows the reader to distinguish between empiricism and fiction without disrupting the flow. Chapter 8 widens the lens to other Roman cities and allows for a more diachronic approach. Poehler shows how Roman cities often became victims of their own success, whereby increased traffic and the need for pavements resulted in restrictive road widths, and the need for systems of traffic management. The book draws out tensions between local and imperial government, especially in the first and second centuries AD when imperial edicts sought to regularise vehicle sizes and movements, and between any imposed rules and the realities of everyday life. The short conclusion provides a concise summary of the main arguments, and points out that there are still possibilities for future analysis of Pompeii's road systems. Any further work, however, will surely build on this thorough and readable account, which shows the value of detailed observation of seemingly quotidian remains at a large scale for investigating questions of economy, authority and practice.

This theme is also developed in The Roman retail revolution, in which Steven Ellis takes another aspect of urban life and uses it as a lens through which to investigate broader issues in Roman society. In this case, the focus is the world of the taberna, the shop, and especially those related to point-of-sale (i.e. to private consumers) transactions of food and drink. Tabernae were treated with disdain by contemporaneous authors such as Cicero and Seneca, seen as dens of gambling, prostitution and drinking. This means historical interpretation must overcome significant biases, but Ellis argues that the analysis of archaeological remains of shops can generate more sophisticated studies of Roman social life. To do this, he draws on two major datasets. The first, and most germane here, is a ‘retail landscape’ of some 20 shops excavated by Ellis and his team in Pompeii. These are then compared with retail landscapes from a further collection of over 100 cities around the Mediterranean. The exceptional preservation at Pompeii allows for a level of detail in the analysis unavailable elsewhere, as evidenced by the fact that 62 per cent of all surviving counter-top shops in the Roman world were found at the site, but the comparative work means broader interpretations can be made.

For Ellis, the development of tabernae was not gradual or continuous, but proceeded through three spikes of activity: the revolution(s) alluded to in his title. These might be characterised as the initial construction, specialisation and finally homogenisation of retail outlets of this type. Large numbers of identifiable shops appear in Roman cities quite rapidly during the second century BC, often with workshop and retail shop combined. During the early Imperial period, another phase of urban expansion, these workshop-shop complexes were replaced by more specialised retail outlets, with the novel innovation of a bar or counter-top for displaying goods. Finally, during the second century AD, shops became much more standardised, occupying one or two rooms on the ground floors of large, multi-use complexes with residential accommodation on upper floors. Ellis connects these changes to developments in Roman urbanism, and especially the relationship between central control and market forces. Along the way, the book covers a wealth of other topics, from inequality to food habits amongst different social classes, showing how, as with traffic systems, a thorough examination of one facet of urban life can lead to insights into the entire social system.

The last volume in this section, The economy of Pompeii (hereafter EoP) stems from a conference held under the auspices of the Oxford Roman Economy Project. It aims to update our understanding of Pompeii's economy in the light of the new data available from the swath of projects undertaken since the mid 1990s (of which the AAPP is a key example). Unsurprisingly, both Ellis and Poehler feature, as well as the editors and some of the contributors to HotS. The volume includes 14 chapters, divided into four sections buttressed by a short Introduction and shorter Conclusion.

The first section, ‘City and hinterland’, develops a theme perhaps neglected in the other three books reviewed, that of the relationship between Pompeii and its surrounding area. Ferdinando De Simone's chapter examines the entire Campania region, using settlement evidence and various other proxies to reconstruct land-use through time. He is able to show that all of the major cities relied both on their immediate hinterland and wider trade networks to satisfy their needs, while wine was produced in sufficient quantities to be exported. This is supported by Flohr's chapter on population and inequality, in which he argues, primarily on the basis of architectural evidence from the city itself, that the population of Pompeii was relatively wealthy even in the Roman world, and must have relied on external trade networks to support this high standard of living. This topic is taken up in the second section, ‘Quality of life’. Here, three chapters use three different proxies to investigate living standards, and all come to similar conclusions. Statistical analysis of artefact types found in different households (Ray, Chapter 3), archaeobotanical remains from a sewer in Herculaneum (Rowan, Chapter 4) and a large-scale analysis of human skeletons (Lazer, Chapter 5) all suggest a rich and healthy population with access to a wide variety of foodstuffs and material culture. The third section is entitled ‘Contextualizing economic life’, and includes papers by Poehler and Robinson (of TSP and HotS fame respectively). Monteix's chapter (7) on production systems summarises a massive amount of data and a wide range of sources to make some interesting interpretations. He is especially strong on the limitations of the evidence, and warns against the recent preoccupation with quantification, which, in the absence of robust datasets, means it is impossible to “do more than just stack up fragile conjectures” (p. 235). The fourth section, ‘Money and trade’, features four chapters that make heavy use of coin evidence. Ellis provides an initial note of caution, showing how a close analysis of the context in which coins were recovered suggests only about 1 per cent can tell us anything about their everyday use; the other 99 per cent were associated with foundation deposits or simply waste. Another HotS alumnus, Richard Hobbs, shows how the coins in insula VI were minted in several cities in the region, again demonstrating the high degree of economic integration. In an excellent chapter, Verboven weaves together textual sources and archaeological remains to argue that the monetary economy, while significant, was supplemented by a sophisticated system of credit, facilitating local trade. The volume ends with a conclusion by classicist Willem Jongman, whose 1988 book initiated interest in attempting to describe the Pompeian economy (Jongman 1988). For Jongman, future directions for the study of the Pompeian economy lie in the application of increasingly sophisticated archaeological science (although no specific techniques are named) and in the application of theoretical models developed for the early modern period. Overall, this is a volume rich in detail and rewarding in content. Perhaps the best compliment I can pay is that even after reading the three previous books, I still discovered new information in every chapter!

Taking all four volumes into account, what can we say about this most famous of sites? Firstly, it is clear that being unique is both a blessing and a curse. The extraordinary degree of preservation means that we can reconstruct aspects of the past which are simply invisible elsewhere. Scale is important here too—similar remains to Poehler's wheel ruts or Ellis's shops are found in other Roman cities, but as partially preserved fragments rather than entire systems. This relative abundance of detail, however, renders comparison with other sites difficult, begging the question of how unique Pompeii was in the Roman world even before the catastrophic events of August (or possibly October) AD 79. Further, as is made clear in the chapter on the history of the AAPP in HotS, exceptional preservation often precludes additional excavation, as there is an understandable reluctance to destroy pristine contexts. This means we still have a fairly poor understanding of the development of Pompeii through time, and especially its earliest phases. It is to be hoped that the rash of major excavation projects begun in the 1990s, which are now coming to publication, will rectify this. Finally, although it is not the aim of any of these books to look too far beyond Pompeii and its place in Roman society, I will finish with a plea for a broader set of comparisons to be made. How do the networks of movement, economic practices and hinterland relationships compare to ancient cities in other cultures across the world, some of which, such as Teotihuacan, Ur or Angkor Wat, have remains almost as well preserved? Perhaps comparing unique sites from a wider pantheon might enable us to ask different sorts of questions. If such comparisons are to be made, it will be on the back of exemplary fieldwork publications such as the HotS, and the sorts of empirically grounded synthetic works available in the other three volumes discussed.

Reference

Jongman, W. 1988. The economy and society of Pompeii. Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben.

Books received

This list includes all books received between 1 July 2018 and 31 August 2018. Those featuring at the beginning of New Book Chronicle have, however, not been duplicated in this list. The listing of a book in this chronicle does not preclude its subsequent review in Antiquity.