Building private Pompeii. A standing structure survey in Insula I.9

Abstract

The state of preservation of the buildings in Pompeii offers the archaeologist a rare opportunity to study the standing remains to investigate the history of the ancient city and the inhabitants who built it.

Without a ‘standard’ archaeological methodology for recording standing structures, the temptation in Pompeii has been to rely on the chronological typologies of wall construction techniques and styles of plaster decoration created in the 19th century, to attribute a datable sequence to buildings. The importance of testing these established classification systems in order to reliably record diachronic change within the standing remains is paramount.

The main objective of this thesis was to devise a comprehensive scientific methodology for recording walls based on the principles of stratigraphic relationships as used in archaeological excavation. By documenting the relative chronological building sequence, this system of recording could be used to test the sequence of traditional methods. The second objective was to evaluate the success of the recording methodology. This thesis will present a narrative of the analysis of the survey of standing structures in the form of case studies of five contiguous houses in the southern half of the insula in order to determine what we can observe and learn from building phases and chronological changes within these houses.

It will be argued that the scientific system devised for recording the standing structures was successful in its application in Pompeii. Using a strictly scientific method to document the diachronic changes as recorded by instances of construction, alterations, repairs and modifications to these houses it was revealed that they were inextricably linked at the level of the neighbourhood.

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