Pompeian Households: An Analysis of the Material Culture.

• Author: Hartnett, Jeremy
• Position: Book review

Pompeian Households: An Analysis of the Material Culture. By PENELOPE M. ALLISON. Cotson Institute of Archaeology Monographs, vol. 42. Los Angeles: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES, 2004. Pp. xvii + 255, illus. $40 (paper).

This volume represents the first large-scale study of domestic artifact assemblages from Pompeii. Penelope M. Allison has painstakingly combed through a tangle of excavation records to produce a database of objects recovered from thirty large houses. This information, in both monograph and digital form, constitutes a major contribution to the study of Pompeian houses, one that should push this subfield to question its oft-repeated mantras and to explore new directions. Adopting an approach "grounded in processual method," Allison deploys her data set "to present an overview of the patterns of spatial distribution of house contents" (p. xv) and thus to interrogate orthodoxies related to several issues--primarily the use of Pompeian domestic space and the formation processes of Pompeii's archaeological record. This analysis is conducted with Allison's customary rigor, and it certainly succeeds in complicating the issues at hand, yet at the same time it offers few new models to fill the voids it reveals.

Three initial chapters discuss evidence and methodology. Whereas texts from Rome and the experience of encountering empty houses on-site have steered study toward the planned uses of domestic space, artifactual evidence, Allison argues, can elucidate how houses were actually used. The following three chapters do the analytical heavy lifting, first considering interpretations of artifacts and furnishings (chapter four), then examining the database from two angles: on the basis of room-types (chapter five) and find-types (chapter six).

Allison expresses interest in "broad functional categories" of artifact use, such as "luxury, utilitarian, industrial, [and] personal" (p. 43), to determine the distribution of household activities. Consequently, while she accepts the traditional interpretation of most finds, she also singles out several misidentifications. Recesses in walls, for instance, take multiple forms and were not only for beds or couches; niches do not always demonstrate a religious function; and some vessels were more closely tied to ablution than food preparation. As this chapter suggests, Allison tends to favor making the negative case and exposing simplistic traditional explanations.

In her analysis of...