Miko Flohr
The Pompeian atrium house plays a central role in current debates about Pompeian society and many scholars have emphasized its role in social discourse. The atrium itself is thought to have been the place where, early in the morning, the male head of the house received his clients. In the evening, friends were invited for dinner in one of the lavishly decorated rooms around the peristyle or back garden. The design of atrium houses is thought to reflect their social role: architecture and decoration were instruments for house-owners to display their status and wealth. Pompeii was a highly competitive society and everyone did what he could to show himself a person of a certain standing and fortune ready for social responsibilities and political office. A well-proportioned house with tasteful decorations on walls and floors, splashing fountains and axial vistas made these things easier.
This, in broad lines, is the model that currently dominates debates about domestic space in Pompeii. It was developed by Paul Zanker (1979) and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (1988; 1994) and further elaborated by, amongst others, Dickmann (1999) and Hales (2003). Their work has significantly changed our ideas about Pompeian atrium houses. However, while the model certainly helps to understand the functioning of large urban villas, which were inhabited by people with many socio-political opportunities and high ambitions, it is less able to explain the character of smaller houses and the lives of the people living there. A major shortcoming in this respect is that the model neglects the role of utilitarian activities in atrium houses. It has been convincingly shown by Penelope Allison (2004, 70), who investigated artifact assemblages in Pompeian atrium houses, that such activities regularly were carried out in highly visible places, including the atrium itself. In fact, it is likely that there were many houses where down-to-earth daily business played a more central and visible role than the maintenance of the social status of the owners.
One group of atrium houses that exemplify this reality are those incorporating a workshop. The relation between domestic space and commercial or industrial activities is a hotly debated issue in Pompeian scholarship. Famous is the theory of Amedeo Maiuri (1942, 161—164), who dated most Pompeian workshops to the last years before the eruption, after the devastating earthquake ofAD 62 and saw their presence in private houses as a sign of deteriorated living conditions in the city in this period, which led to commercialization and caused the construction of workshops at the expense of residential space. Two decades ago, Wallace-Hadrill (1988, 260-261; 1994, 118-142) introduced a different view. He stressed the central role of atrium houses in the urban economy and argued that much of Pompeii’s commerce and production actually took place in or near atrium houses. Wallace-Hadrill made clear that the many connections between elite houses and shops were a natural phenomenon since the urban elite structurally depended on trade for its income.
Yet, although Wallace-Hadrill (1994, 138) did not see problems with retail outlets connected to atrium houses, he was less at ease with workshops in domestic contexts and argued that several workshop types, such as fulleries and bakeries required a lot of space and thus were often located in large houses without atria. This is not completely correct. Wallace-Hadrill was right in concluding that many large houses without atria contained workshops or areas for horticulture, and it certainly is the case that only a small percentage of all houses with an atrium contained a workshop, but his statistical analysis was unbalanced: Wallace-Hadrill worked exclusively from the perspective of houses and did not check his findings by exploring the alternative perspective — that of the workshops. Had he done so, he would have reached a different conclusion. More than half (12 out of 23) of all excavated bakeries were situated within domestic complexes that also had an atrium. Of the twelve excavated fulleries in the city, three were built in an atrium house, and these together had more than half of the excavated town’s production capacity. Indeed, of all recognizable workshops at Pompeii, more than 40% were situated within a private house with an atrium or aperistylium. These ‘domestic workshops’ have the tendency to be larger than workshops in tabernae or other contexts (Flohr 2007, 137). Thus, not many atrium houses contained workshops, but many workshops were situated in an atrium house.
Such facts raise the question of how things were combined. Did atrium houses with workshops loose their residential character or was the workshop easily incorporated in its domestic context? I have already argued elsewhere that Pompeian atrium houses in which a workshop was inserted in most cases did not lose their domestic function (Flohr 2007, 136-141). It is the purpose of this article to focus on the actual functioning of such houses. One workshop type will be taken as a case study: the fullonica or fullery, a workshop devoted to the finishing and maintenance of woolen clothes. Fulleries are often presented as extremely inconvenient places because fullers made use of urine and other smelly chemicals (Bradley 2002, 35). For modern scholars, fulling is an activity that seems hard to reconcile with residential activities. Yet, the three largest fullonicae of Pompeii were located in atrium houses. As a consequence, these complexes often are thought to have lost their residential functions: scholars have described them as houses converted into fulleries (e. g., Jashemski 1993, 150; Foss 1994, 221; Bradley 2002, 36). In what follows, the material remains of the three ‘domestic fullonicae in Pompeii will be evaluated and it will be argued that all three complexes kept their primarily residential character and thus give us an interesting glimpse of the interplay between domestic and commercial priorities within three individual houses.
Fullonica I 6, 7
The best preserved fullonica of Pompeii was situated in a building along the lower part of the busy Via dell’Abbondanza and is commonly known as the ‘fullonica of Stephanus’ (Fig. 6.1). It was excavated between July, 1912 and April, 1913. Detailed reports that mention the objects found by the excavators and give short descriptions of the rooms were published in the Notizie degli Scavi di Antichitd (1912-1913). Interpretations of the house tend to downplay the domestic character of the complex. Maiuri (1942, 173), of course, argued that the fullonica of Stephanus was a house converted into a fullery after the earthquake of AD 62/63. Spinazzola (1953, 765-785) interpreted the building as a complex specifically designed as a large laundry for the urban rich; he gave all ground floor rooms a function in the workshop. Thus, the narrow room a next to the shop (b) became the place where clothes were collected and the administration was done. In the richly decorated atrium e and the large oecus g, Spinazzola saw the rooms for the reception of the clientele. The window between rooms g and h was identified as a hatch, through which clothes were transported to and from the working space in the back part of the house. The latrine (n) and the kitchen (m) served the ‘slaves’ working in the fullery (q). Later scholars have unanimously followed Maiuri and Spinazzola.
Fig. 6.1 — fullonica of Stephanus (16, 7): plan.
Admittedly, there are a couple of arguments suggesting that the complex did not have a strongly developed residential side. In the first place, one of the most typical elements of Pompeian domestic architecture is lacking: the complex did not have the usual entrance corridor that connected the atrium with the street and often provided a vista emphasizing the residential nature of a building. Instead, the only access was through the shop (Fig.
6.2). Even though there was a wide opening between this shop and the atrium, any domestic functions of the complex thus were hidden away behind the commercial nature of the main entrance. This was not for lack of space: if the owners had wanted it, it would have been possible to make an entrance corridor next to the shop, for example, instead of the narrow room a along its west side. Secondly, there is evidence that the construction of the fullonica in the back part of the building was part of a major reorganization of the complex, which included the construction of the heavy opus vittatum mixtum piers in portico p, but probably also of the shop in front of the house, where similar materials and building techniques have been used. In fact, only the area between the atrium and the back yard does not show traces of reconstruction works. Thus, the project seems to have involved a total rebuilding — from the ground up — of the front part and the back part of the house, which implies that it was uninhabited for a while. Furthermore, on the basis of the building techniques and the fourth-style wall decorations associated with this building project, it seems that it took place sometime in the third quarter of the first century AD.
The dating of this reconstruction, however, does not mean that the complex was ‘turned into a fullonica after the AD 62 earthquake, or that it was completely adapted to its new industrial function. There is no evidence supporting Maiuri’s view that the rebuilding took place because of collapse during an earthquake. Though it must be said that many of the walls are covered by plaster or decoration, so that the building history of the house is hard to reconstruct, there are nowhere traces of the cracks and repairs that have been found in many other Pompeian houses. More importantly, none of the arguments summarized above necessarily excludes domestic functions for those parts of the complex that were not part of the fullonica. It must be noted that the main working area of the fullery was concentrated in the southernmost part of the building, hidden behind the back yard. The
Fig. 6.2 — fUllonica of Stephanus (16, 7): entrance.
Only other place that shows archaeological traces of involvement in the production process is the shop, which has a rather utilitarian wall covering and holes for the fulling press in the east wall. These two spaces together make up a complete fullery. In the back yard workshop, there were the narrow niches in which clothes were soaped in and three large basins for the rinsing of clothes. The shop in front had ample space for the other treatments to which clothes were exposed during the fulling process, such as combing, shearing and pressing (Flohr 2006, 193—195). Thus, the rest of the building was not needed for the daily business of the workshop.
Of central importance to our understanding of the part of the complex not necessarily involved in the workshop, are atrium e and its surrounding rooms, most prominently oecus g. The atrium and the oecus had elaborate fourth-style decorations on the walls. Oecus g had a decorated floor with inset pieces of marble. This suggests that these rooms were meant to have a domestic character. Nevertheless, there are two features in this area that might be seen as an indication for non-domestic activities. One is the strange impluvium precisely in front of the oecus, which actually was a basin surrounded by low walls (Fig. 6.3). Similar impluvia are rare at Pompeii, but there are some — for example in the neighboring house I 6, 8, in the Casa di Octavius Quartio (II 2, 2; cf. Fig. 2.1) and in house VII 1, 37. Spinazzola (1953, 778—779) thought that during the construction of the fullonica, the impluvium was turned into a basin in which clothes could be washed. This, however, is unlikely. Not only was there a complete washing system in the working
Fig. 6.3 — fullonica of Stephanus (16, 7): atrium E, basin.
Area in the back yard, but also the properties of the basin suggest that it was meant to have aesthetic rather than industrial qualities. The outside of the walls has been decorated with depictions of plants on a red background, a decoration similar to that on the lower part of the walls of the room; at the head of the basin stood a fountain covered with various types of marble and in the floor a pattern of marble fragments has been laid.
Another aspect that needs further consideration is the connection between the atrium and the shop. The opening between these two rooms is as wide as the opening between the shop and the street, so it seems that there was no clear boundary between the strongly commercial atmosphere in the shop and the possibly more domestic atmosphere in the rooms behind it. Why was it thought necessary to have such a wide opening if the rooms performed two completely different functions? In that case, would not a wall with a door of normal size have been more logical? It is true that the present opening implies that the atrium at least partially could play a role in the workshop, but one detail should not be overlooked: there are sockets indicating that the opening could be closed off by wooden doors. This meant that, if necessary, part of the atrium could be used by workers, while at other moments, the opening could be closed and the shop would have little impact on the atmosphere in the atrium. Thus, spatial boundaries between the two rooms were fluid and temporal rather than sharp and permanent, but it would be hard to maintain that they did not exist at all. In fact, such ambivalence in architectural form supports the interpretation of a multi-purpose space, where domestic and industrial activities could co-exist and one could take precedence over the other as the situation dictated.
The artifact assemblages reported by the excavators also suggest the existence of a functional boundary of some sort between the shop and the rooms behind it: there is a sharp difference between the objects found in the shop and those found in the adjacent atrium and the surrounding rooms. Most finds from the shop can be related to the production process in the fullery. There seems to have been a concentration of instruments along the shop’s east wall. There was a large cloth press of which the iron parts were found as well as the holes for fixing the wooden beams in wall and floor (NSc 1912, 248). In the southwest corner, the excavators found a strange instrument of iron together with two scissors (NSc 1912, 247). Another instrument of uncertain use was found near the entrance. Throughout the room, several other scissors were found as well as two combs of different coarseness. In the atrium, directly behind the shop, in the northeast corner of the room, the remains of a wooden cupboard were discovered. The excavation report provides a long list of its contents, which included many small pots and bottles and a wide range of utensils, but also a sculpted head of white marble, a die that probably was reused as part of a necklace and a large collection of beads of glass pastry and stone that maybe formed the rest of the necklace (NSc 1912, 286). There also was a group of sea shells that may have been used for storage of cosmetics or jewelry (Allison 2006, 385). In the same corner of the atrium, the excavators found traces of a small wooden box containing 21 beads of blue glass pastry, possibly of a second necklace, and a cup of very fine pottery (NSc 1912, 248). Further, on the west side of the door between the atrium and the shop stood a second cupboard, in which an equally wide range of objects was found, including an oil lamp, several bronze and terracotta jugs, weights of stone and a broken hand mill (NSc 1912, 283—284). In the rest of the room, few objects were found. A highly oxidized bronze jug with a decorated handle was found in the impluvium, while in the area south of it, only the discovery of four beads of glass pastry has been recorded. In the opening to oecus g, there were the remains of a small wooden box containing various utensils (NSc 1912, 333). In short, the atrium contained assemblages of personal items and domestic utensils and storage of such objects seems to have been an important function of the room. This connects well to the conclusion of Allison about rooms of this type. Having investigated the assemblages of artifacts found in these rooms, she argues that atria were ‘convenient locations for keeping the necessities of life’ (Allison 2004, 70).
Thus, the atrium had a primarily domestic character. But what about the other rooms? In the small room c, the excavators found the remains of a bed and a small table. It seems that the space under the bed was used for storage: the reports mention two vases and a circular basin of bronze. Further, there was, again, a large quantity of beads of glass pastry, found against the wall at a height of 60cm above the floor, which was seen as an indication that there was nail in the wall with a necklace hanging over it (NSc 1912, 287). In the northeast corner of oecus g an ensemble of bronze objects was discovered. It consisted of a bronze jug with a decorated handle, a circular bowl and a small circular bronze table with three heavily decorated legs (NSc 1912, 333). The jug and the bowl are referred to in the excavation report as ‘oenochoe’ and 'patera. It has been noticed that objects referred to with these labels by excavators often have been found together in domestic contexts. Some scholars have suggested that they were used for washing hands before dining (Allison 2006, 21). Obviously, we cannot be sure that the jug and the bowl were used for these purposes, but the richly decorated ensemble evokes an image of residential luxury that fits nicely with the ubiquitous decorations on the walls and floors of the room.
The rooms immediately south of the atrium and the oecus did not contain any finds, but the excavators mention that the volcanic deposits in this area were disturbed, which suggests that there were post-79 intruders (NSc 1912, 353). The standing remains of rooms h and k suggest that they were intended to have a domestic function: both have decorated walls, and there was a triclinium in the back of room h. An important assemblage of artifacts was found in the kitchen (m), which retained a full complement of pans, vessels and a cooking tripod (NSc 1913, 142): cooking and eating belonged to the standard activities that took place in the house. The location of the kitchen is remarkable: it is situated next to the main working area along the south side of the portico, at a certain distance from residential rooms h and k. With the working area, the kitchen formed a kind of ‘service cluster’ that is typical for Pompeian atrium houses (Wallace-Hadrill 1994, 39). This means that all ‘non-domestic’ activities were concentrated in two places: near the entrance and behind the backyard. The area between these two extremes may have maintained a predominantly domestic character.
On the basis of what has been argued above, the fullonica of Stephanus may be seen as a multifunctional complex that combined residential and commercial functions. Essentially, however, it was just a house in which people lived, slept, ate and worked and which they probably considered their home. We have few indications about the composition of the household, but based on the evidence for necklaces, it probably consisted of men as well as women. The collocation of the kitchen and the workshop suggests that they were used by the same group of people, who were responsible for both the production process and the cooking. The workshop and the workers thus were part of the household. Indeed, there is little reason to assume that the household occupying differs significantly from other households occupying atrium houses of similar size. Hence, it is likely that the fullonica of Stephanus was inhabited by a family with a few servants and, perhaps, children.
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