Pompeian Houses and Seasonality: a contextual approach

Recent, and not so recent, debates about exactly when in AD 79 Mt Vesuvius erupted throw into question our understanding of when Pompeii was actually buried. If indeed it was buried much later in the autumn of AD 79 than generally thought, what impact does this have on our understanding of the households in Pompeii and of the seasonality of their daily activities? Perhaps more significantly, at this point, how do the processes by which Pompeian houses have been excavated and recorded, over several centuries, impact on our ability to understand how domestic practices in these houses changed with the seasons?

This paper surveys the types of materials and the types of likely seasonal behaviour sodocumented in a Roman urban domestic context such as in Pompeian houses – i.e. activities

related to food consumption and food storage, sleeping arrangements, gardening and

relaxation – with a particular focus on activities that might have taken place in late summer

and autumn. It surveys the ways in which the various types of evidence, that can be used to

better understand seasonal activities in Pompeian households, have been recorded. This

applies particularly to the spatial arrangements of movable house contents and the recording

of food remains. The paper assesses the limitations that the recording methods of the

Pompeian excavations have placed on our ability to answer questions about the seasonality of

Pompeian domestic behaviour and discuss how we might focus any further excavations and

analyses of the AD 79 levels of Pompeian houses and their contents on addressing such

questions.