Evidence for production from pottery

Ceramicists have generally categorized pottery recovered in the archaeological record at Pompeii as outlined in Table 7.1. Since a significant proportion of pottery recovered at Pompeii is traditionally

Table 7.1 — Provenience of pottery classes recovered in the excavations at Pompeii

Classified as local cookware, coarseware, and transport amphorae on the basis of fabric, it is generally assumed that there was a thriving pottery industry at Pompeii which benefited consumers within the town and its rural territory (Annecchino 1977, 105-107; Di Giovanni 1996, 65-67 and 99—100; Gasperetti 1996, 56-59). Also, since there is evidence for the import of various classes of pottery from other production centers in the Bay of Naples region, it has been suggested that there was an active regional commerce in such pottery. Finally, the presence of classes of extra-regional pottery from the eastern Mediterranean, North Africa, Roman Gaul, and the Iberian Peninsula is generally taken as evidence for Pompeii’s participation in the Mediterranean-wide trade networks that linked production and consumption centers in many parts of the Roman world.

Because this article is concerned primarily with the production and distribution of pottery as a craft good, transport amphorae, whose economic value is principally as a container, is not addressed here. Studies on this topic are available by others (Panella and Fano 1977; De Sena and Ikaheimo 2003; for a detailed examination of this class of pottery, see Pena and McCallum 2009a and 2009b).

In order to understand the production and distribution of locally and regionally manufactured pottery it is most important to focus on those classes produced at Pompeii and in the Bay of

Naples area. Analysis of cookware and coarseware pertaining to the AD 79 occupation of the site and from earlier first century AD and late first century BC contexts suggests that this production was highly specialized and probably part of a well-organized regional craft industry. Studies of the cookware and coarse utilitarian ware stored in the Casa Bacco and the Granai del Foro suggest a remarkable homogeneity of first century AD pottery forms in use throughout the town (Di Giovanni 1996, 66—67; Gasperetti 1996, 56—59). Of the more than 400 intact cookware vessels from these storerooms, 71% are represented by three forms, while 91% are represented by five forms (Di Giovanni 1996, 66). The same is true of coarsewares for food consumption or storage: of the hundreds of vessels in the Casa Bacco and the Granai del Foro, most (80%) can be assigned to five basic forms (Gasperetti 1996, 52—54).

These findings correlate with data from the pre-AD 79 strata at Pompeii. Excavations carried out by the University of Milan in insula VI 5 in the 1980s show a similar pattern. In both cases, a large number of cookware and coarseware pots were recovered from first century AD contexts, but they are part of a limited repertoire of forms (Bonghi Jovino 1984, 140—174). Preliminary work on the Porta Stabia assemblage from VIII 7, 1—15 suggests that upwards of 70% of the identifiable forms of first century AD cookware correspond to the three most common forms from the Casa Bacco and the Granai del Foro collections. Indeed, the coarseware assemblages from two large early to mid-first century AD contexts excavated in 2005 are made up almost entirely of only two different forms (McCallum and Manfredi 2007): Di Giovanni’s (1996, 90—95) Granai del Foro types 2311 and 2312 and Gasperetti’s (1996, 38—44) forms 1252 and 1262.

There is also a high degree of standardization visible in these vessels with respect to interior and exterior finish, sizes, manufacturing techniques, fabric, and firing (Gasperetti 1996, 56—57), and this phenomenon is not restricted to the site of Pompeii as the same cookware and coarseware forms are commonly found at sites throughout the Bay of Naples area, including Neapolis, Cumae,

Puteoli, and Herculaneum (Di Giovanni 1996, 65-67; Gasperetti 1996, 56-60). While Gasperetti (1996, 56-57) suggests that the almost perfect correspondence of many coarseware vessel profiles could indicate the use of pottery molds, no molds for coarseware have been found at Pompeii or elsewhere in the Bay of Naples area. It is more likely that the cookware and coarseware pots in the Casa Bacco and the Granai del Foro collections are so similar because they were produced by a small group of potters active in just a handful of pottery production facilities, including the two facilities at Pompeii discussed below. These potters threw the same vessel form in rapid succession, were accustomed to use the same amount of clay for each pot, used a relatively limited number of forming techniques and so produced vessels that were almost identical. The implication is that a small number of pottery production facilities and, by extension, potters were involved in the local and regional production of utilitarian wares.

The evidence for red-slip tablewares, including Italian terra sigillata, Gallic sigillata, Iberian sigillata and Eastern sigillata, shows a similar regional integration, including the movement of raw materials from the point of extraction to production centers elsewhere in the Bay of Naples area. While much of the red-slip pottery recovered at Pompeii from first century AD contexts was made in Latium, Etruria, Gaul, Iberia, and the Aegean, the majority is Campanian red-slip (Pucci 1977, 9-16; Soricelli 2004). Of the red-slip stamps that can be provenienced in the Casa Bacco storeroom, 60% can be associated with production at Puteoli and Neapolis; of the red-slip recovered at excavations of Augusto-Tiberian contexts throughout the town, 28% can be identified as coming from Puteoli and 14% of this comes from a single workshop, the so-called Naevius Officina (Pucci 1977, 9-16).

A similar pattern can be seen in late republican black gloss pottery in the Bay of Naples generally. X-ray fluorescence analysis of black gloss pottery wasters from the Corso Umberto kiln site in Naples, other sites in the Bay of Naples region associated with consumption, and shipwreck sites show that these vessels were all likely made of clay from clay deposits on Ischia (Picon 1994, 43-44). These results suggests that the production of black-slipped tablewares during the late republican period in the Bay of Naples was a complex, highly organized process that involved the movement of raw materials (clay) from a specific, presumably high quality quarry site to production centers throughout the region. Since the clay used in the production of Puteolan red-slip pottery appears identical, this pattern of resource exploitation possibly continued into the first century AD. The site of Pompeii, then, was in part dependent on potters at Puteoli for its supply of such fine-bodied tablewares from the late republican period until AD 79 and these potters were dependent on Ischian clay-pits.

Taken together, these classes of tablewares and utilitarian wares provide evidence for a sophisticated and specialized mode of pottery production during the imperial period. The standardized forms, production techniques, and finish of the pottery are indicative of highly organized and specialized workshop production by professional potters (Peacock 1982, 25-41). It is also significant that this standardization is not simply a local phenomenon at Pompeii but rather a regional phenomenon as evidenced throughout the Bay of Naples. The high technical level achieved also demonstrates the presence of accomplished, professional potters throughout the region who guaranteed a quality product and, quite likely, a competitive market (Gasperetti 1996, 56-57). The presence at Pompeii of large amounts of Puteolan and Neapolitan red-slip made with Ischian clay implies the existence of an integrated, regional market system, both with respect to resource exploitation (clay) and product distribution (pots).

The same evidence also suggests that a significant proportion of the pottery consumed at Pompeii was produced locally or regionally. While there is evidence for the importation of cookware and finebodied slipped tablewares from production centers in North Africa, Gaul, and the eastern Mediterranean, particularly during the first century AD, the amount of this material is relatively small compared to locally and regionally produced equivalents (De Sena and Ikaheimo 2003, 310, table 5).

Based on their examination of a pottery assemblage from the Casa delle Vestali (VI 1, 7), De Sena

Fig. 7.1 — The Via Superior pottery workshop: plan including the associated commercial strip building.

And Ikaheimo (2003, 309-311; 315-316) claim that there is a shift from the consumption of locally and regionally produced pottery to the consumption of extra-regionally produced pottery starting in the Julio-Claudian period and that this trend becomes more pronounced during the Flavian period. While their data suggest that more extra-regional pottery is evident in the archaeological record from AD 1 to AD 79, extra-regional finewares, coarsewares, and cookwares do not supplant locally and regionally produced equivalents at Pompeii (De Sena and Ikaheimo 2003, 310, tables 5 and 6). Their data demonstrate that from the Flavian period various classes of extra-regional pottery were appearing at Pompeii and that this likely correlates to the increase of imported, amphora-borne commodities at the site (De Sena and Ikaheimo 2003, 307-312). De Sena and Ikaheimo’s conclusion, that Pompeii of the mid-first century AD came to participate in commercial exchange that linked it to production centers throughout the Mediterranean, is valid. However, the proposition that there was a shift away from the consumption of locally produced

Domestic pottery is not borne out by their raw data. Unfortunately, at present there are no other published data sets to which the Casa delle Vestali material can be compared, although it is likely that the investigations at the Casa delle Nozze di Ercole (VII 9, 47) and those of the Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia will provide comparanda in the near future (McCallum and Manfredi 2007).